Adventure; Young Adult Literature; Historical Fiction; Fantasy
Are we going to get any argument that this is an adventure novel for young adults? It's about two fifteen-year-olds who do nothing but hurl themselves into the path of danger. Adventure and young adults are the name of the game in this one—plus, no matter how thrilling things get, the language and plot stay pretty straightforward, which means it was written to be readily devoured by teen readers.
Now that we've established that, let's talk about historical fiction and fantasy. This book isn't straight up historical fiction. As we talk about in the "Setting" section, there's a twist to World War I as we know it—the whole Darwinists/Clankers thing—and this is where fantasy comes into play.
The thing about fantasy in this book, though, is that instead of wizards and dragons, it looks a whole lot more like steampunk. Steampunk is usually set in world that in some way resembles pre-World War I Europe, and there's the addition of—wait for it—steam-powered structures, like the walkers. Also goggles. Lots and lots of goggles. Notice how everybody in this book loves a good pair of goggles. It may not be the makings of traditional fantasy, but we are definitely asked to suspend our sense of reality as we know it for this one.