ALA Booklist (Wed Nov 01 00:00:00 CDT 2017)

Years ago, Avery Kohl's mother was taken by frightening men in crow masks and imprisoned in New York's Tombs asylum because of her magical abilities. Now, at 16 and experiencing strange powers of her own, Avery is afraid that those same men will come for her. But it's 1882 in New York, and in order to keep her alcoholic inventor father and herself afloat, Avery works as a welder in an ironworks factory and spends what free time she has working with her falcon, Seraphine, and listening to her best friend, an ex-slave named Khan, tell stories he learned from his grandmother. But Avery's powers are growing too strong for her, and soon she may not be able to keep them a secret any longer. Despite a tidy ending and an ill-defined love triangle, this is an intriguing debut set against an alluring, well-constructed backdrop. Avery's steampunk, fin de siècle New York is full of possibilities, and Schaumberg follows them to their deepest, most frightening depths.

Horn Book (Mon Apr 01 00:00:00 CDT 2019)

Sixteen-year-old ironworker Avery Kohl is an aura healer with the ability to see and manipulate people's energy and emotions. But in the steampunk alternate-nineteenth-century NYC where she lives, people displaying such abilities--including Avery's mother--are captured and thrown into the Tombs, a fearful asylum where medical experiments are performed. Richly developed fantasy meets well-researched alt-history in Schaumberg's debut novel.

Kirkus Reviews

A young woman with the ability to see auras, seeking her mother's freedom, discovers that with great power comes even greater danger in Schaumberg's steampunk-lite, historical debut.White, 16-year-old Avery Kohl's life has steadily unraveled since the day her mother was imprisoned in an asylum called the Temple of Mind Balance Studies—the titular Tombs—three years ago. Thrown with her father into poverty that requires Avery to work as a welder, Avery is terrified that she has inherited her mother's visions and affliction; now, after a bizarre explosion at the ironworks, Avery's visions become impossible to ignore. With help from a diverse secondary cast including the black, formerly enslaved Khan (sadly exoticized—a literal "magical Negro") and a troupe of Romani travelers, Avery sets out to embrace her power as an aura healer (someone who can see and manipulate living energy and emotions) and free her mother from the clutches of a corrupt and treacherous scientist. Schaumberg has crafted a rich and gritty 1880s New York while infusing the historical with enough of the speculative to land it just this side of steampunk. The result falls unfortunately flat, however, with plot-stalling lags in exposition, underdeveloped plotlines and character motivations, and a disappointing lack of follow-through on efforts at representation of disability and racial diversity. The gratuitous appearances of the slur "Gypsy," while historically relevant, emphasize the conspicuous absence of any other contemporaneously common racial slurs in the text.Not a must-have. (author's note) (Historical fantasy. 14-17)

School Library Journal (Fri Dec 01 00:00:00 CST 2017)

Gr 9 Up-After the men in the crow masks drag her mother off to the asylum beneath the notorious Tombs prisons, Avery Kohl's privileged life crumbles: she's forced to move with her father to a grimy tenement and leave school for a job at the ironworks. Now, years later, she's barely getting by in the slums of 1882 New York City. When a shocking incident reveals that she's inherited the psychic power that got her mother locked away, Avery begins a quest to understand her abilities and rescue her mother, all while evading capture by the crow-masked men and their villainous boss. The plot of this steampunk-tinged historical fantasy ticks along steadily, though at 400-plus pages, the latter half will begin to feel overlong. A late-breaking love triangle feels particularly tacked-on, with Avery declaring a baffling instant bond between herself and a boy she hardly knows. The book's final act, however, builds to a pulse-pounding conclusion that leaves plenty of room for a sequel. As a heroine, Avery (who is white) alternates between confused and capable, and she's surrounded by lightly sketched diverse supporting characters: her protective friend Khan is African American, and a Romani community offers psychic guidance. (The Romani are repeatedly referred to as Gypsies, a deliberate choice noted in the afterword.) VERDICT Intriguing details and occasional thrills jostle with an overwrought plot; recommended for die-hard fans of urban historical fantasy such as Libba Bray's "Diviners" series. Rebecca Honeycutt, NoveList, Durham, NC