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A famous explorer and a masochistic poet vs. a time-traveling pervert and Victorian eugenicists.
Pyr, 2010, 373 pages
( A bizarro steampunk novel with a smidgen of respect for history. )
Verdict: As a genre overrun by trend-chasers and relabeled paranormal romances, "steampunk" generally does little for me. The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack is a genuinely creative entry in the field that develops an alternate history to explain how we wound up with clockworks and genetically engineered were-leopards, and basing the story on actual historical personages and events, operating in the margins of speculation and interpretation. The writing could be better, but the story is fantastic, and made me want to check out the rest of the series.
My complete list of book reviews.
Pyr, 2010, 373 pages
Sir Richard Francis Burton: explorer, linguist, scholar, and swordsman; his reputation tarnished; his career in tatters; his former partner missing and probably dead. Algernon Charles Swinburne: unsuccessful poet and follower of de Sade; for whom pain is pleasure, and brandy is ruin! They stand at a crossroads in their lives and are caught in the epicenter of an empire torn by conflicting forces: engineers transform the landscape with bigger, faster, noisier, and dirtier technological wonders; eugenicists develop specialist animals to provide unpaid labor; libertines oppose repressive laws and demand a society based on beauty and creativity; while the Rakes push the boundaries of human behavior to the limits with magic, drugs, and anarchy.
The two men are sucked into the perilous depths of this moral and ethical vacuum when Lord Palmerston commissions Burton to investigate assaults on young women committed by a weird apparition known as Spring Heeled Jack, and to find out why werewolves are terrorizing London's East End. Their investigations lead them to one of the defining events of the age - and the terrifying possibility that the world they inhabit shouldn't exist at all!
( A bizarro steampunk novel with a smidgen of respect for history. )
Verdict: As a genre overrun by trend-chasers and relabeled paranormal romances, "steampunk" generally does little for me. The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack is a genuinely creative entry in the field that develops an alternate history to explain how we wound up with clockworks and genetically engineered were-leopards, and basing the story on actual historical personages and events, operating in the margins of speculation and interpretation. The writing could be better, but the story is fantastic, and made me want to check out the rest of the series.
My complete list of book reviews.
