The world needs more weird west. I like American manifest destiny optimism over British Imperialism of the contemporary (in an alt history timeline) of Steampunk. Also, weird west tends to grab the "punk" elements more often than steampunk does.
Now this was set in China, but it took me a bit to orient myself to that. Now this is clearly a western (Fistful of Starstone is a pretty unmistakable nod) but not in the american west with a British Imperial as the antagonist. Part of me wants to parse this out further. However, I wind up saying "eff it" and just chunk it back into the alt-history bin and I don't really care which sub-box it winds up in.
I blinked a bit at the ending. I may have been confused, but weren't the miners all arriving for work, going down to the mine? And even if they weren't, what the hell are they going to do to feed their families without even a shitty oppressive job to work? Did our hero just kill a buttload of innocents in order to have a dramatic explosion to walk slowly away from toward the camera as the credits roll?
I got the distinct impression they were slaves and that his action was to "free" them. As in a "better dead than just changing masters" kind of freedom.
