WARNING: There may be spoilers ahead, though they should not be too serious or severe. 
 I would like to take a moment to acknowledge that the UK cover of this book is possibly the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. It is perfect. The North American cover was also quite impressive, though not as wonderful as the UK cover. 
 Isn't it pretty? Though I will admit that the US cover does a better job of giving you a feel of what the book is about. UK: 
 US: 
 Anyway, let me continue this review. 
 While Stormdancer had a lot of great aspects, it also had a lot of crappy parts. We'll start with those. 
 1. Oh, the cheese. "The samurai with the sea green eyes!" "I'm not that bad looking. Could she even want me?" *Gag* (Oh and did I mention that one awkward part where two boys are watching her bath through a peephole? Yeah... I mean, yes, they needed to find out about her tattoo, but couldn't they have done so without adolescent boys spying on bathing girls? 
 2. The love triangle. Oh, the love triangle. I am so sick and tired of those things. 
 3. While the idea of the feudal Japanese steampunk world was really cool, the insertion "hai" everywhere was kind of annoying. If you're going to insert the transliteration of Japanese words, at least use a few more than just "hai," weapon names (which were okay, I was okay with that really,) and name suffixes. Some of the suffixes were even misused. Even I know that, and I'm not close to being Japanese at all. I found out after reading the book that Kristoff's main research for this book was wiki and anime. Not okay. It is not okay to skimp on research when writing a book. 
 Those things were the main crappy parts of the book, but like I said, the book also had its good- no, great,- moments. 
 1. The idea. The world is super interesting. I love steampunk and I definitely think that it needed to get outside of Victorian England. The premise of this book just worked and I loved the world. It could have been developed a bit more, but for a YA fantasy, it was impressive. I would read the next one just for more of the world and the steampunk aspects. 
 2. The characters. They felt sincere and real. Yukiko was bratty in the beginning and rather too boy-crazed (girls... really, they are ridiculous and yes, I'm allowed to say that.) Still, she was real and in the second half I quite enjoyed her when she wasn't mooning over Hiro's sea green eyes. I really liked Kin. And Buruu is awesome. In fact, he's so awesome that he gets number 
 3. all to himself. The arashitora. Brilliant. I adored him. He was intense, and yet dignified. I believe I mentioned in my review of The Scorpio Races that I adores dangerous mythical creatures. That is probably a main reason as to why I enjoyed this book. 
 4. There was action! This book was exciting and in the climax I was on the edge of my seat. I could not help but gasp and then giggle (albeit quietly as I was in someone's vehicle and I do not like to publicly emit such noises. My exclamations, however, were quite loud. I couldn't help it.) due to the intensity. It was awesome. 
 So, yeah, all in all, I really enjoyed this book. I'm vacillating between a rating of three stars or four stars. Really the good and bad pretty much even out, so I have hard time deciding. I think that due to all the uncomfortable innuendo (and outright sensuality,) I will shave off the fourth star that could have been. I'm an innocent, and such things make me uncomfortable.