A Clockwork Heart by Liesel Schwarz

Tags

fantasy, historical fiction, speculative fiction, steampunk

I can’t believe I forgot to write a review for this book when I read it.I have been a bit busy and ill over the past few months, but that’s no excuse for me not to recommend such a wonderful title as this.

I am a sucker for steampunk and this title by the talented Liesel Schwarz hit the button for me. I must admit to not having read the first book in the series, but I don’t believe this reduced my enjoyment of the story at all.

Eleanor Chance is the oracle, a human with the ability to connect to another world, a world where evil is commonplace, and when an army of automaton zombies begin to wreak havoc on London, she and her colleagues )including Madame Bathory, famed Vampire and wife of Dracula) take it upon themselves to put an end to the terror. As expected, things don’t go exactly to plan and we leave Eleanor on a mission to find her husband who has been “zombiefied”, for want of a better term.

There is a great sense of adventure in this novel and, as seems to be common among the steampunk genre, the heroine is strong and able…and just a little foolhardy. While at times one could be forgiven for likening the automated army to Doctor Who’s Cybermen, there is enough invention and uniqueness in the story to make any such thoughts fleeting.

If you like your novels with polished brass, flying ships and fin de siècle fog, you won’t go wrong with A Clockwork Heart.

4 Poodles

Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti by Genevieve Valentine

Tags

steampunk

When I was a wee girl my parents used to take me to see the circus at the Kelvin Hall in Glasgow every Christmas. I vividly remember the smells: sawdust, animals and cotton candy, and the other kids laughing at the freakishly frightening clowns. I remember the noises; the trumpeting, roaring otherworldliness of it all and to this young Scottish girl, it was nothing short of magic.

But what took place annually in Glasgow pales into normalcy compared to the Circus Tresaulti. In Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti, Genevieve Valentine has created a  steampunk Big Top like no other you have experienced.

The world in which Mechanique is set is a world at war. Many, if not most, cities have fallen and the circus Tresaulti travels around the war-ravaged land as it has done for tens – if not hundreds – of years. The ringmaster, an enigmatic ex-opera singer, collected her acts on her travels. She takes in broken people and remakes them, replacing bones with copper pipes, lungs with bellows and used their discarded bones to make an amazing set of wings which whistle and sing and call out to those whose bones have contributed their ribs, vertebrae and ulnas.

There are aerialists, jugglers, strongmen and some like Bird whose special talents refuse to be defined by any convenient label. Most junior of all her cast is little George, a young lad to whom Boss refuses ‘to give the bones’. He pulls on a pair of brass legs over his own and wanders around the towns and cities where the circus stops, pinning up flyers and selling tickets. But as the story develops, we discover that Little George is perhaps the most important of all the circus’s members.

Ms. Valentine crafts her story using multiple viewpoints and flashbacks, and a series of repeats and literary ‘ticks’ which show a writer at the top of her craft. Her characters are rounded and have cleverly told backstories which make it easy to empathise with them.

I love Steampunk literature and Mechanique is one of the best I have read.

If you like Steampunk, read this book. If you like speculative fiction, read this book. In fact, if you just like a book with a great, believable plot and characters for whom you care, read this book. Genevieve Valentine has knocked the ball out of the park with her debut novel and I hope we see more from this talented writer very soon.

Wild Children by Richard Roberts

Tags

horror, speculative fiction, steampunk

Do you believe in sin? Do you believe that your sin can mark you? This is what happens in Richard Robert’s superb book Wild Children.

Told in five ‘acts’ and from 5 different perspectives, we follow the story of six different children, each turned into a wild child by some unspecified sin. From the first girl, Jenny, seduced by a Wolf boy into running away to become wild, to a boy seeking to repent from his sins by consuming the misery of others, an almost angelic dove-child, two devoted brothers and a young priest ordered to help destroy the very thing he was becoming himself, Wild Children casts a spell over the reader which remains long after the end of the book.

The Wild Children are eternally young – they never grow up, although they can die – and are equally patronised by the rich and feared by the church. There are elements of this story which remind me of Phillip Pullman’s Dark Materials trilogy and, like that book, although the protagonists are children, the story is very adult and, at times, dark.

We are never told what the sin is or why the children take on some level of animal characteristics but when the book ends it leaves the possibility of another beginning and, possibly, a sequel.

Robert’s prose is lean and flowing and he successfully captures the different voices of each character’s perspective whilst still maintaining a cohesive voice for the entire book.

I loved this book and I’m looking forward to reading more from this talented author.

 

Automatic Woman by Nathan L Yocum

Tags

crime fiction, steampunk

If you can imagine Sherlock Holmes written by Micky Spillane and set against a steampunk alternative Victorian London, you’d maybe begin to understand the fascinating universe in which Nathan L Yocum’s book, Automatic Woman, takes place.

Jolly, a rotund detective from the Bow Street Firm, finds himself drawn into a very strange case when an automaton, Swan Lake’s Swan Princess, kills her creator and Jolly is suspected of the crime. What follows is a race through London and beyond while Jolly tries to find the real culprit, clear his name and get to the bottom of the ‘science’ behind this unique automaton.

Peopled by characters purely from his own imagination, as well as reimagined historical figures – Charles Darwin as a megalomaniacal rich man in the vein of James Bond’s Blofeld – Yocum creates a cast of noire characters who are more than just the usual ciphers. I was a little disappointed by the ‘tart with a heart’ love interest for Jolly. There is a paucity of rounded female characters in the book, but if I’m honest, the story doesn’t really suffer for all that.

Jolly is likable. He has a strong voice and confident manner, a very believable character. The plot moves along at a good pace and I liked the open ending – surely a sequel is in the works?

If you have enjoyed The Court of the Air (Stephen Hunt) I am sure you will love this too.

Carniepunk by Various

Tags

anthology, horror, short stories, speculative fiction, steampunk

I have always found carnivals and traveling fairs very sinister places; places where the ‘freaks’ and dispossessed gather together and, at least in my imagination, seduce the unaware into the underworld, never to be seen again. It seems I’m not alone in my madness as Carniepunk, an anthology of urban fantasy stories set in and around traveling fairs, proves.

There is a wide variety of stories in this book and many, like ‘The Werewife’ by Rachel Caine (one of my favourites) have a dark, surreal, nightmarish quality to them.

For me, the best story in the collection is ‘The Demon Barker of Wheat Street’ by Kevin Hearne. Here, the author manages to blend his vision of hell with comedy – a psychic dog who sees “…a poodle in my future” – very successfully. I was glad to see that the short story takes place within a world created by the author in other books and novellas. I’ll certainly be checking those out soon.

One or two of the tales were a little ‘teenage’ for my tastes, particularly The Cold Girl, again by Rachel Caine, but in an anthology, it’s rare to love every story equally.

If you are a fan of urban fantasy or have a fascination for Carnivale, you could do worse than read this collection of short fiction. A good read.

Horror Shorts

Tags

horror, science fiction, scifi, steampunk

Fancy a short shot of horror? I have two books to recommend to you.

In Broken Sigil by William Meikle Joe Connors is a cop who is called to investigate the death of his friend, Johnny Provan. Connor’s investigations soon unearth an affair between his friend and his late wife and when he visits the rooming house where Provan was living he begins to suspect that there are darker forces at work than just betrayal.

I don’t want to give away any spoilers but if you can imagine the love child of Stephen King and Micky Spillane what you come up with might look a lot like this wonderfully dark, noir-esque horror. Meilkle offers hints of other worlds, human gatekeepers and the all important symbolism of the Maltese Falcon. A lovely, traditional horror I stayed awake to finish.

Marrow’s Pit by Keith Deininger is a very different beast. Ballard works, lives and serves the Machine – the mechanism which is his world. Like a giant steampunk creation in a future world where citizens have been told that ‘outside’ is no longer able to sustain life. In flashback we are shown Ballard’s relationship with his father and how he and his wife Laura, a cold and heartless woman, met.

There is much in this book to remind us of other stories: Logan’s Run was the first to come to mind but then ending came as a shock and was not at all what I was expecting. The ending initially struck me as quite depressing but after some thought I realised that ‘up’ depends on what direction you are facing. A great read.

Gideon Smith and The Mechanical Girl by David Barnett

Tags

horror, steampunk

I really enjoy reading Steampunk and I have reviewed one or two here on my blog. Not every author captures the essence of the alternative Victorian technology and society as well as David Barnett does in Gideon Smith and The Mechanical Girl.

So, what is this book about? Gideon Smith is the son of a Yorkshire fisherman. a young man addicted to the heroic adventures of Captain Lucian Trigger in his favourite penny-dreadful. But when Gideon’s father is mysteriously lost at sea and a local man goes missing in some local caves, the claims of a young boy to have seen monsters makes Gideon believe there are supernatural powers at work.

Meanwhile, Bram Stoker, holidaying in Whitby, believes that Count Dracula himself has travelled to the UK and vows to track the vampire down. Instead of Vlad, Stoker discovers Countess Elizabeth Bathory, renowned in history for – allegedly – bathing in the blood of virgins to maintain her youth.

Gideon decides that only Captain Trigger himself would be able to save the Empire from the demonic forces at work and with Stoker and the Countess, travels to London to find his hero. As Gideon soon discovers, heroes aren’t always what you’d expect and he is forced to decide whether or not he has what it takes to be the hero he read about. And just who is Maria, the mechanical girl of the title?

I sometimes worry that books in this genre rely too heavily on the lore of real-life characters of the era and while there are many historical figures making an appearance in GSATMG, my fears were quickly dispelled by the confident and creative way the author used them. Barnett deftly describes just enough of his alternate universe for us to get the feel for it without being weighed down by meaningless details. His characters are interesting and believable, and I was especially pleased to find such strong, confident female characters. There was a point when I thought the author might be trying to do too much with his book: Bram Stoker, vampires, creatures from Ancient Egypt and the Dr Frankenstein-like Dr. Einstein all feature. But, somehow, it works. The various elements all come together so well that by the end, I wondered why I had ever been worried.

Barnett ends his excellent book with the set up for the sequel. I have two words to say to him about that.

HURRY UP!

Highly recommended.