Regina Puckett has created a vivid, imaginative world in this novel with an engaging protagonist; Liberty is lively and not afraid to speak her mind. With a compelling plot and moments of surprising tenderness, especially between Liberty and the robot, Boy, Puckett has absolutely done justice to the steampunk genre. The tense, post-apocalyptic atmosphere was dead-on. I was delighted the whole way through. Five stars!
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Set in a post-apocalyptic future, I Will Breath is an endearing tale of a bond between Liberty, a strong-willed, courageous female pilot, and Boy, a robot that forever changes her life. Set in the time after the Great War, this is more than a futuristic story of a devastated world. It is an allegory—as suggested by many of the character names such as Liberty and Harmony—and it raises profound questions as to what is human and what is mechanical, and as to the meaning of preserving history when the present is so starkly different from the past.

When we first meet Liberty, she is isolated from her environment and from other humans. She is flying her machine, and being utterly focused on survival. “if she didn’t do something soon, the entire ship was going to blow itself to Kingdom Come.”

Boy, whom she comes to care for, is quite an unusual robot. “His father downloaded thousands of images to him, to safeguard, ones of the world before the Great War.” He is the Keeper of the past. Should we recover memories of what once was? Of what purpose is it, if we can’t go back to it? “Boy’s father could never bear to see what the Great War had stolen from us.” Put together, these images set a vision of “what we can have again if we do’t give up.”

Boy tells Liberty: “Your father told you never to love anyone…” To which she says, “If you’ll love enough for us both, I will breathe enough for us.” Indeed, here is blurring the line between human and mechanical, or more precisely—fusing the two, forging them into a bond.

Five stars. ( )