Reviews

• Lovely Novel

  Blaylock is so very mad in such a charming manner that, short of religious objections to the subject matter (mad science, murder, grave-robbing), it is uite simply impossible to not like this book. And, in fact, if your religion does cause objections to this book, I advise that you find a new religion. It's that good.

• Over-the-Top Steampunk Lunacy

  This book is sort-of an absurdist parody of steampunk thrillers. Don't expect this to be anything like Tim Powers' "The Anubis Gates" or, IMHO, the work of Alan Moore or Grant Morrison. Think of the Firesign Theater doing Fu Manchu, or an epic version of one of Michael Palin's "Ripping Yarns," and you'll just about have it. I'd say if you loved "The Life of Brian" or "Time Bandits" you'll enjoy this loony nonsense from the end of Blaylock's whimsical period. A techno-mystic airship is orbiting the late-19th-century earth; aboard may be an imprisoned extraterrestrial. When it crashlands in Victorian London all hell will break loose since its secrets are sought by the Royal Society, a fraudulent evangelist and his reanimated mother, a fiendish vivisectionist and his corrupt assistant, an evil millionaire, and a team of (other) assorted eccentrics led by the square-jawed scientist-adventurer, Langdon St. Ives. Can St. Ives and his super-competent valet Hasbro keep the alien homunculus out of the claws of the villainous Ignacio Narbondo? Can they help poor Jack Owlesby receive his long-delayed inheritance? And can they rescue Jack's beautiful fiancee from the monstrous fate implied by the dreaded Marseilles Pinkle?!? Well sure. The question is, how crazy are things going to get? Perhaps a little TOO crazy for some folks. Blaylock has, IMHO, a tendency to pull his punches and here he throws a lot to compensate, keeping us off-balance with reanimated corpses, a lost starship, longevity serum, an exploding rocket silo, secret sewers, bizarre brothels... The plot isn't so much complex as distracted with subplotting! If you love lively lunacy, however, you'll like this.

• Not bad

  A little slow start, and I'm not quite finished with it, but a pretty good book, especially for those who like the Steampunk Genre

• A story as intricate and complex as any infernal device.

  I first read this story in a battered paperback form more than 15 years ago. I found the story a bit over complicated back then and the story rests on your successfully picking up the threads of the back story as the plot progresses. Nothing is ever fully explained. Nonetheless, it is this inscrutability that I have come to love about the book over subsequent readings. The world-building is rich and reveals a Victorian London suitably murky and ripe with mystery. As in all of James Blaylock's best books the disparate elements all come together in the end with a satisfying and surprising denouement full of complexity and humor - just like one of William Keeble's boxes. Highly recommended.

• Grab your top hat and hold on

  Wow. Grab your top hat and hold on. A group of scientists and adventurers band together to resist the machinations of a despicable millionaire, an misguided "messiah", a hunchbacked evil necro-scientist, and an ambitious young alchemist. They're in pursuit of a drifting blimp with a skeletal pilot. The writing is a bit difficult but consistent with Victorian period of time; Dickens is a bit easier to read (for me). "Cabinet" (as a term for an apartment) was a bit overused. Intricate devices and large gems in carved wooden boxes, "ghouls" (not in the D&D sense but merely zombies), and iron and copper space vessels combine in a sooty, foggy London. For "steampunk", there was very little actual steam (engines) but this book is early in Blaylock's novels.

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