Dawn of Steam: First Light, by Jeffrey Cook and Sarah Symonds. 2014

“Dawn of Steam: First Light” is the first of a series of books set in an alternate past. The Napoleonic Wars have been won by England (with help from the USA and others). Dirigibles already exist; some were used in the war. The USA is still largely unexplored by Europeans, as are most parts of the world. But a book exists, written by an explorer, wherein he tells of his journeys across the North American continent (there is a Northwest Passage, he claims), to Australia, China, Japan, South America, and Antarctica- basically, the whole world. Two men make a bet in a club; one believes the book is the truth, one doesn’t. Therefore, two teams will set out to duplicate the author’s travels, to see if they are even possible. We follow the course of one of the teams; the good guys. Told through letters and a diary, it is almost all in first person by an ex-soldier who knows how to work a camera. He writes to his fiancé and to the gentleman who has made the bet and is financing the journey.

The first almost half of the novel is spent gathering the team. They assemble a group that has the skills needed to make the expedition a success. While this part of the book may be necessary to introducing the cast to us, it’s overly long. With so little action, I nearly gave up. When they get to North America (via one member’s family airship), they have a couple of events that, while full of action, do not move the story forward. They do finally start across the continent, but the plot never really works out; there is no build up and climax- it’s just sort of “and then we did this and then we did that”.

I didn’t care much about the characters. The basics were there and could have been great (and maybe they are in the later books in the series), but there was nothing built around “sharp shooter”, “lady engineer”, or “daughter of the explorer who passes as a man most of the time and can do damn near anything”.

I was sadly disappointed, especially because I’d enjoyed the first book in the other series these authors have written. Only three out of five stars.

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The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, by Natasha Pulley. Bloomsbury, 2015

 Thaniel Steepleton is a telegrapher at the home office, spending his working hours in a former broom closet, listening to the machines that have their wire tentacles all over Westminster. It’s a boring life. Then one night a bomb threat comes through, set for May. When he goes ‘home’- a Spartan room in a boarding house-he discovers his door open and a velvet box tied with ribbon and addressed to himself. In it is a fancy pocket watch of the finest work. Realizing it’s his birthday, he assumes his sister has been there and left it. When he sends a telegram to her in Scotland and she replies that of course she’s home and hasn’t been to London, the mystery begins.

Six months after this, he’s in a pub when the watch starts sounding an alarm. He goes outside to try and shut off the noise- and narrowly escapes an explosion. Obviously whoever gave him the watch knew when the explosion was set to happen. Thaniel is set by his superior to find where the watch came from, and then shadow him. So he ends up renting a room from the Japanese watchmaker who admits he made the watch. Keita Mori, a lonely man from Japan, doesn’t just make watches. He does all sorts of clockwork- his pet is a clockwork octopus that is supposed to act randomly- but keeps ending up hiding in Thaniel’s dresser drawer, stealing his socks.

Meanwhile, another narrative strand involves Grace Carrow, who is studying physics at Oxford, and has to dress as a man to gain entrance to the library. Her best friend is also from Japan, a dandy from a royal house. She has an inheritance, but her father won’t let her have it- until she marries. Which she doesn’t want to do.

Even more strands appear. I have to admit I was totally confused at several points. There is a supernatural element, making it even harder to figure out. But it all comes out in the end. It’s a steampunk story, a Victorian mystery, and a love story. It was totally engrossing, with a wonderfully created atmosphere, and great details- clockwork fireflies? Yes, please! The characters could have been filled out better; for as much page time as Thaniel gets, we don’t know much about his interests are or even how he spent his spare time before the novel starts! Still, five stars. 

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The Bedlam Stacks, by Natasha Pulley. Bloomsbury, 2017

 

In 1859, Merrick Tremayne is living in the ancestral home in Cornwall, doing the best he can with a ruined leg. The leg was ruined working for the East India Company, for whom he had done such varied services as run a tea plantation and smuggle opium. No longer of use to them, he lives with his brother, to whom the house and lands belong entirely, who wants him out and gone as soon as possible. The two solutions the brother puts forward are either Merrick take on a rural parsonage, or he’ll be sent to a mental asylum. Why the asylum? Merrick swears that the statue in the garden moves, and that someone is messing about in his greenhouse.

Merrick is a plantsman (who just so happens to have had a grandfather and father who went to Peru), so when the East India Company (who desperately need more quinine for the rampant malaria in their areas of operation) needs someone to locate high-yield quinine trees in Peru, take and smuggle out cuttings, and get them started in an area the EIC operates in, they come calling in the form of Merrick’s old friend from the Navy, Clem Markham. Never mind that there have been no successful ventures into the Peruvian jungles, or that Merrick can’t walk without crutches. It’s better than the asylum or the parsonage.

The first part of the novel moves very, very slowly. Training Clem to take cuttings. The sea voyage. The mule journey to the Peruvian interior, at high altitude. The fact that the man who provides them with a guide to lead them to “frost resistant coffee trees” will kill them if he finds out they are after quinine. Thankfully, when they reach the village of New Bethlehem (“Bedlam”), the white gunmen leave them with the native guide, and things get weird. The village is on volcanic glass, with hot springs warming the river. There are trees that burst into flame from even a tiny spark, golden luminescent pollen in the air, clockwork statues that move when approached, and the forest is bordered by a line of salt that only the priest (who is also their guide, Raphael) may pass.

This story is adventure both supernatural and natural, historical fantasy, a touch of steampunk, an indictment of how Europeans treated the people of other continents, and a love story. The plot speeds up after they reach Bedlam, thankfully, but it is never a high speed story. The descriptions are beautiful. The characters are built up, layer upon thin layer, as are the relationships. I fell in love with this place and with this book. I totally forgive it for moving slowly. Five stars.

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