Let’s take a quick look to see what’s arrived at the Geek Compound.
The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man
by Mark Hodder
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It is 1862, though not the 1862 it should be…
Time has been altered, and Sir Richard Francis Burton, the king’s agent, is one of the few people who know that the world is now careening along a very different course from that which Destiny intended.
When a clockwork-powered man of brass is found abandoned in Trafalgar Square, Burton and his assistant, the wayward poet Algernon Swinburne, find themselves on the trail of the stolen Garnier Collection—black diamonds rumored to be fragments of the Lemurian Eye of Naga, a meteorite that fell to Earth in prehistoric times.
His investigation leads to involvement with the media sensation of the age: the Tichborne Claimant, a man who insists that he’s the long lost heir to the cursed Tichborne estate. Monstrous, bloated, and monosyllabic, he’s not the aristocratic Sir Roger Tichborne known to everyone, yet the working classes come out in force to support him. They are soon rioting through the streets of London, as mysterious steam wraiths incite all-out class warfare.
From a haunted mansion to the Bedlam madhouse, from South America to Australia, from seances to a secret labyrinth, Burton struggles with shadowy opponents and his own inner demons, meeting along the way the philosopher Herbert Spencer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Florence Nightingale, and Charles Doyle (father of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle).
Can the king’s agent expose a plot that threatens to rip the British Empire apart, leading to an international conflict the like of which the world has never seen? And what part does the clockwork man have to play?
Burton and Swinburne’s second adventure—The Clockwork Man Of Trafalgar Square—is filled with eccentric steam-driven technology, grotesque characters, and a deepening mystery that pushes forward the three-volume story arc begun in The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack.
Haven (Trial of Blood & Steel, Book 4)
by Joel Shepherd
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The Army of the Regent Arosh advances on the forces loyal to Saalshen, homeland of the serrin people, as the serrin’s friends are in full retreat. Their only hope is to reach the city of Jahnd – the serrin word for Haven – across the River Ipshaal, the only human city in Saalshen itself. The Army of Lenayin marches with the Regent, but Sasha, sister of the newly crowned King Koenyg, can no longer stomach the awful cause for which her people march. As tensions between herself and her brothers rise, Sasha’s sister Sofy, wedded to the Regent, travels to the city of Tracato, to attempt to negotiate a peaceful transition of its wonderful heritage of her husband’s rule. But there are forces beneath the Regent’s banner that wish to see all serrin and serrin-influenced civilisation destroyed for good. As the serrin people fight for survival, families must be betrayed, enemies reconciled, nations persuaded and great armies fought, as A Trial of Blood and Steel reaches its dramatic conclusion.
The Society of Steam Book One: The Falling Machine
by Andrew P. Mayer
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In 1880 women aren’t allowed to vote, much less dress up in a costume and fight crime…
But twenty-year-old socialite Sarah Stanton still dreams of becoming a hero. Her opportunity arrives in tragedy when the leader of the Society of Paragons, New York’s greatest team of gentlemen adventurers, is murdered right before her eyes. To uncover the truth behind the assassination, Sarah joins forces with the amazing mechanical man known as The Automaton. Together they unmask a conspiracy at the heart of the Paragons that reveals the world of heroes and high-society is built on a crumbling foundation of greed and lies. When Sarah comes face to face with the megalomaniacal villain behind the murder, she must discover if she has the courage to sacrifice her life of privilege and save her clockwork friend.
The Falling Machine (The Society of Steam, Book One) takes place in a Victorian New York powered by the discovery of Fortified Steam, a substance that allows ordinary men to wield extraordinary abilities and grants powers that can corrupt gentlemen of great moral strength. The secret behind this amazing substance is something that wicked brutes will gladly kill for and one that Sarah must try and protect, no matter what the cost.
Books received 3/13/11 Pyr edition was originally published on The Geek Curmudgeon