Stormbuckler and the Leviscopic Engine

Can machinery corrupt a person's soul? Is it possible to break loose from the trap-cycle of mechanical objectification? Will an individual gain a truer sense of self if he or she evades the lure of technological interdependence?After escaping the Staines parish poorhouse, Stormbuckler rescues one of Asher-John Lindwürm's most essential workers from certain death. After the episode, the American maverick-inventor industrialist and self-made steamillionaire Lindwürm, a new guy in town, rewards Stormbuckler by affording him a position in his corporation's drawing department at a recently opened locomobile manufactory. The job comes with a suit of clothes and a generous salary. Meanwhile, parlour-housemaid Mayotte is likewise looking to improve her lot. She leaves a life of servitude (domestic employment) to join the enterprising (but unorthodox) American inventor's machine-plant as his clerical assistant.Stormbuckler and Mayotte discover that outward appearances are deceptive at the American millionaire's manufactory. For a start, people have been disappearing. And Lindwürm engages a gang of ferocious armed thugs who protect his ultrasecret ambitions. Lindwürm also employs an evil second-in-command who has schemes of his own and a very malevolent disposition.What mystery links the unfolding events?What frightful monstrosity is being constructed in Lindwürm's sinister steam shed 7? What mystery has the ministry agent uncovered about Lindwürm's enterprises? Why does a tribal chief show up in town?Will Stormbuckler help Mayotte? Are he and Mayotte somehow connected? Does the tribal chief have something to do with their connectedness?Will the teenagers escape the menace of a gung-ho technological revolution? Or will they yield to mechatronic modernization? How many more will succumb if Lindwürm an his main henchman, Lassiter, turn their avaricious daydreams into diabolical and dangerous reality?