4.5 Stars -- I liked it quite a bit!
This is one of those pleasant surprises. I had forgotten to put any books on hold at the library for a while, and I was out of reading material, so I was relegated to perusing the shelves for books that looked interesting. I don't usually have great luck doing that. The great majority of books are mediocre or, even worse, down-right bad. I don't remember what other titles I picked up that day, but I was quite pleased by Airman by Eoin Colfer.
If you're not familiar with his name, Eoin Colfer wrote the Artemis Fowl series. My husband really likes the series, and I think we own nearly all of them, even though it's written for YA, possibly even juveniles.
But this post isn't about Artemis Fowl.
Airman is a steampunk novel about Conor Broekhart, and it is very reminiscent of The Count of Monte Cristo (I have read the book itself, which was okay, but I thought the movie was fantastic and remember watching it time and time again when I was in college).
In Airman, Conor, a young genius born to fly, is accused of murdering the king and is unfairly imprisoned. Using the knowledge gained from his French tutor before his imprisonment and advice taken from a blind musician who shares his cell, Conor has to escape and prove his innocence before the villain kills the princess too.
The story takes place on a pair of ficticious islands off the coast of Ireland in the late 1800s (obviously... it's steampunk afterall!). Conor is a strong character, and his transformation from innocent quick-witted boy to hardened prison leader, while quick, is understandable and not unbelievable. His escape plan is very steampunk-worthy.
The climax of the story, Conor's reunion with his family and the evil Marshall Bonvilain, is fast-paced and full of twists and turns, though of course everything turns out fine in the end.
Overall, I think this book is of much higher quality than the Artemis Fowl books (though those are entertaining in their own right), and I approve of Colfer's new endeavor. But then again, I'm partial to steampunk :)
So if you want a quick, riotous read and feel like a little Monte Cristo without all the dragging found in the original book, Airman is quite a suitable replacement.
Showing posts with label Steampunk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Steampunk. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Soulless by Gail Carriger
4 fluffy bunnies
Soulless makes me giggle when I think about it. I really have no way to categorize this book, because it's nearly a smut book but just doesn't quite reach that level. I suspect that the lack of heaving bosoms and pulsing members is what prevents it from being what I consider straight-out smut.
The premise of the book is quite interesting, though just another drop in the well of books about vampires and werewolves. The added twist to this particular story is that in addition to the supernatural, there is also the preternatural, ie, those without souls.
The main character, Alexia Tarabotti, just happens to be such a preternatural. While perfectly normal looking (well, unattractive, according to standards of the day), the 26-year-old spinster (this is 19th-century London, after all) can negate the supernatural powers of werewolves and vampires with a single touch. Her inquisitive, obstinate nature and preternatural status constantly put Alexia in compromising and potentially dangerous situations, which tend to lead to Lord Conall Maccon, alpha werewolf of the local pack and head of BUR (a government agency that supervises the supernaturals) being called in.
Alexia and Conall irritate each other to no end, so there's the sexual tension...
With a little steampunk thrown in for fun, Soulless is a fun, guilty-pleasure type of novel. You read it not for any type of edification, but because you like vampires, werewolves, and a little bit of pinch and tickle and don't mind wasting a few hours of your day.
Soulless makes me giggle when I think about it. I really have no way to categorize this book, because it's nearly a smut book but just doesn't quite reach that level. I suspect that the lack of heaving bosoms and pulsing members is what prevents it from being what I consider straight-out smut.
The premise of the book is quite interesting, though just another drop in the well of books about vampires and werewolves. The added twist to this particular story is that in addition to the supernatural, there is also the preternatural, ie, those without souls.
The main character, Alexia Tarabotti, just happens to be such a preternatural. While perfectly normal looking (well, unattractive, according to standards of the day), the 26-year-old spinster (this is 19th-century London, after all) can negate the supernatural powers of werewolves and vampires with a single touch. Her inquisitive, obstinate nature and preternatural status constantly put Alexia in compromising and potentially dangerous situations, which tend to lead to Lord Conall Maccon, alpha werewolf of the local pack and head of BUR (a government agency that supervises the supernaturals) being called in.
Alexia and Conall irritate each other to no end, so there's the sexual tension...
With a little steampunk thrown in for fun, Soulless is a fun, guilty-pleasure type of novel. You read it not for any type of edification, but because you like vampires, werewolves, and a little bit of pinch and tickle and don't mind wasting a few hours of your day.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Boneshaker by Cherie Priest
5 stars -- I love this book!
So... my husband grabbed this off the library shelf (with several others I haven't read yet) and said, "I got these for you. I think you'll like them." So I read the back-ad/flap copy and took them home. And I'm glad I did!
Boneshaker (an adult book, imagine that) is a steampunk zombie book that takes place in late-1800's Seattle, Washington. But because I'm in the American midwest, I don't know the history of Seattle, and I could have believed that the book takes place in a re-imagined modern-day Seattle. After all, steampunk necessitates change in many modern conveniences... and there wasn't very much of the Victorian element in the book at all.
In the late-1800s, the Russians want to find gold in Alaska and they pay a brilliant scientist for his invention, the Boneshaker. The scientist, Levi Blue, builds it and then takes it for "a test run" under Seattle (although there are various theories about what the "test run" really was). The Boneshaker just "happens" to go underneath Seattle's financial district, which causes a lot of chaos in and of itself, but it also opens up a gas leak. The gas, hypothesized to come from Mount Ranier and called the Blight, makes people sick. And sometimes the people turn into zombies if they don't die from the Blight.
So downtown Seattle is walled in to contain the gas, and the people are evacuated to the Outskirts.
Our story begins 15 years later when Levi's widow and son re-enter the walled-in district. A small group of people have decided to live within the walls, and it is these people that both help and hinder our two main characters. They meet the Chinese, whose presence in the area is never really explained, although they are the ones who pump in fresh air; the mad scientist Minnericht, who may or may not be Levi and who has set himself up as the king of the walled-in area, and many of his cohorts; and a variety of people referred to as "Doornails" who choose to live there for no particular reason but are now in perpetual debt to Minnericht. They also meet several airship captains (pirates!) who dip in and out of the walled-in area but don't live there.
Zeke, the son, enters the district so that he can clear both his father and his grandfather's name (his grandfather, Maynard Wilkes, died due to the Blight while freeing prisoners initially left to die in their jail cells. Some people view Maynard as a hero... some don't), and Briar, our main character, comes after to find and save him.
As is wont to happen, Zeke falls into the wrong hands, and Briar falls into all the right ones.
I really, really liked this story. I couldn't put the book down and finished it in less than a day. I loved the zombies, but the book isn't so zombie-heavy as to make it seem like "just another zombie book." The steampunk comes out heavily in crazily awesome inventions, with new ones popping up all the time. Plus(this is huge for me!), a majority of the story revolves around whether Minnericht is or is not Levi Blue, and despite the fact that a majority of the story is told from Briar's POV and she appears to know the truth, the reader isn't privvy as to whether Minnericht is or is not Levi Blue until the very end.
The author did a fantastic job of keeping the who's, why's, and how's hidden without hindering the story. A lot of the time, a plot like this gets to be, "Will you just tell me already?!" or "I already know what you keep trying to hide," but in this story, neither of those things happened.
This is a fantastic sci-fi book, and if you have any interest in steampunk, zombies, Seattle, good action stories, etc., I think you should read this. It's even worth the half-day you lose trying to finish it :) Plus, the type is a reddish-brown, and I adore different-colored fonts.
So... my husband grabbed this off the library shelf (with several others I haven't read yet) and said, "I got these for you. I think you'll like them." So I read the back-ad/flap copy and took them home. And I'm glad I did!
Boneshaker (an adult book, imagine that) is a steampunk zombie book that takes place in late-1800's Seattle, Washington. But because I'm in the American midwest, I don't know the history of Seattle, and I could have believed that the book takes place in a re-imagined modern-day Seattle. After all, steampunk necessitates change in many modern conveniences... and there wasn't very much of the Victorian element in the book at all.
In the late-1800s, the Russians want to find gold in Alaska and they pay a brilliant scientist for his invention, the Boneshaker. The scientist, Levi Blue, builds it and then takes it for "a test run" under Seattle (although there are various theories about what the "test run" really was). The Boneshaker just "happens" to go underneath Seattle's financial district, which causes a lot of chaos in and of itself, but it also opens up a gas leak. The gas, hypothesized to come from Mount Ranier and called the Blight, makes people sick. And sometimes the people turn into zombies if they don't die from the Blight.
So downtown Seattle is walled in to contain the gas, and the people are evacuated to the Outskirts.
Our story begins 15 years later when Levi's widow and son re-enter the walled-in district. A small group of people have decided to live within the walls, and it is these people that both help and hinder our two main characters. They meet the Chinese, whose presence in the area is never really explained, although they are the ones who pump in fresh air; the mad scientist Minnericht, who may or may not be Levi and who has set himself up as the king of the walled-in area, and many of his cohorts; and a variety of people referred to as "Doornails" who choose to live there for no particular reason but are now in perpetual debt to Minnericht. They also meet several airship captains (pirates!) who dip in and out of the walled-in area but don't live there.
Zeke, the son, enters the district so that he can clear both his father and his grandfather's name (his grandfather, Maynard Wilkes, died due to the Blight while freeing prisoners initially left to die in their jail cells. Some people view Maynard as a hero... some don't), and Briar, our main character, comes after to find and save him.
As is wont to happen, Zeke falls into the wrong hands, and Briar falls into all the right ones.
I really, really liked this story. I couldn't put the book down and finished it in less than a day. I loved the zombies, but the book isn't so zombie-heavy as to make it seem like "just another zombie book." The steampunk comes out heavily in crazily awesome inventions, with new ones popping up all the time. Plus(this is huge for me!), a majority of the story revolves around whether Minnericht is or is not Levi Blue, and despite the fact that a majority of the story is told from Briar's POV and she appears to know the truth, the reader isn't privvy as to whether Minnericht is or is not Levi Blue until the very end.
The author did a fantastic job of keeping the who's, why's, and how's hidden without hindering the story. A lot of the time, a plot like this gets to be, "Will you just tell me already?!" or "I already know what you keep trying to hide," but in this story, neither of those things happened.
This is a fantastic sci-fi book, and if you have any interest in steampunk, zombies, Seattle, good action stories, etc., I think you should read this. It's even worth the half-day you lose trying to finish it :) Plus, the type is a reddish-brown, and I adore different-colored fonts.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
