"The Difference Engine" by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling

Ray gave me this to read when I expressed an interest in steampunk. He tells me this is the seminal steampunk novel. Definitely multilayered, and there were sections of the book that I really loved and was amazed by. However, the last section was disappointing, and no concrete mystery was really solved. I also missed out an a lot by not knowing very much about the Victorian era. I'm not interested enough to study and then reread the novel. I did do some minimal studying afterwards, and learned that Ada Byron, Lord Byron's daughter is considered by some to have been the world's first programmer. That's interesting. For future readers, I recommend getting an overview of the Babbage era before reading the novel.