Several things make a post

1. Stayed up to 3 finishing The Watchmaker of Filigree St. Yes, it's hard to assign this a genre. Not quite steampunk, not quite historical A/U, not necessarily fantasy... Call it historical magic realism and be done with it. That at least explains why the characters don't fall neatly into genre roles, and good for them.

I found it hard following the logic of uhh how not to think of a possible future so as to prevent that future from happening because uh because. Very near the end was a single word that enlightened my perplexity, but since Mori presumably didn't know the word he couldn't use it to pigeonhole himself, and so he could only describe things the way they looked to him. (But Steepleton knew the word, so Mori should have too. Just saying.)

Caveats about Meiji families aside, I still have to wonder if female Oxbridge scientists swore and blasphemed (as it was then thought of) quite as much as Grace regularly does.
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incandescens's Librarians strike me as an oddly incurious bunch, at least where things that fascinate me are concerned. Maybe it's because the junior librarians, at least, are kept with their noses to the grindstone and their attention focussed on what it'd be focussed on anyway-- books.

But what if- purely as speculation, naturally- someone a bit more inquisitive should visit the Library?
( No really, this is pure speculation )