Another mixed bag of Steampunk short fiction with this collection's theme being romance. Even though I sound somewhat disappointing I found this collection was better than the last Steampunk anthology I read as at least this one got it right that all the stories had a Victorian Steampunk feel to them. Although the title seems to imply that the romances will be hot and heavy they are actually rather chaste with barely and ankle was shown. I found some of the stories rather engaging while others I had to slog through or just skimmed getting the main plot but skipping the dialog. Overall there are some good stories in here although I can only recommend the book if you an die hard romance fan or Steampunk fan otherwise maybe check it out at the library. Even though its called Hot and Steamy it came out more like Tepid & Misty

Some of the stories I liked

Chance Corrigan and the Queen of Hearts by Michael A. Stackpole
Absinthe-minded Archaeologist by Vicki Johnson-Steger
Automate Futura by Stephen D. Sullivan
Love comes to Abyssal City by Tobias S Buckell
For Queen and Country by Elizabeth A Vaughan
Grasping at Shadows by C.J. Henderson ( )

This was a really mixed bag- about half the stories were at least competently written- and the other half were NOT.

The good ones were entertaining. The others were really, really tedious.

Also- none of the stories were especially "hot" in the erotica sense. Mostly, everyone was chaste. ( )