As the follow up to Boneshaker, I was a little surprised with the slow start to Clementine. Sure, I recognized the characters, but for some reason the opening action didn’t quite succeed in sinking its tenterhooks into me. It got after a while, but it wasn’t until the interplay between Hainey and Boyd came into the picture. Up until that point, the book fell a little flat for me. That might have something to do with the way the author described Kansas City as rolling pin flat (it’s not), but I think it’s more than that. I think the problem was that up until Hainey and Boyd met up there wasn’t really an antagonist to speak of. You had the red head who stole the Free Crow from Hainey, but he’s presented as this amorphous being that only truly existed in either the past or the present. For Boyd, although there are a couple random people who seem like they could potentially be antagonists for her, but it’s completely undeveloped and left as a sort of vague ships passing in the night kind of thing. It’s possible that this is further expounded upon in the next books, but the point remains for this book. Once the two meet, there’s plenty of tension and pacing, but right up until that point, it’s like reading a gray winter’s day.