"...and with not a single Indian in sight!" reads the cliff-hanger to chapter 11 of this early science fiction story. It was then that my last nerve, frayed by racism and the passage of 150-plus years, snapped.

I can't do it. I can overlook and explain away with the best of 'em if I'm gettin' somethin' for it. I was not only not gettin' nothin' for it, I was puttin' in a damn sight more effort than I care to put in for a pleasure this attenuated. I tried three separate times, before and during the pandemic, and now ~after(?) it. I think that's more than fair, and I've never made it past this point.

I know it was written in 1868, but it completely dehumanizes Native Americans, has awful nationalist stereotypes and weird ideas about disability. I also know that those were the widespread notions at the time, but perhaps we should just close the page and leave those notions in the aforementioned century. Yeah, the steam man is cool for its time - but the cool doesn't outweigh the very uncool problematic parts. I feel compromised and ashamed by merely having read it :/

I got this book on NetGalley in exchange for my honest review, and as you can see, receiving it for free has not affected my opinion.