Steampunk: Where Sci-Fi meets Historical Fiction

Greetings and salutations.

Let me begin by saying that this will not be the sole post here to represent the blooming genre of steampunk literature, but there will be many more to come I'm sure. You may recall my first post about the Dapper Men and to be certain there will come a time when several of us post about the most glorious and fashionable authoress Gail Carriger but for now please bear with me.

Since my own personal discovery of this genre two Octobers ago I have become something of an addict. I have a rather long list of books of this ilk which I very much desire to read, but unfortunately do not have the funding or the time as of yet to complete all of them. I am picking my way as I go, and every month or so I pick up a new steampunk treat to satiate my hunger.

This month I picked up the book "Dreadnought" by Cherie Priest.

In a nutshell: the Civil War is still raging many years after our history tells us it was supposed to have ended. Texas is a Republic, Mexico is an Empire, and the North and the South are still fighting tooth and nail. Airships, boats and trains are primary modes of transportation, the slaves have been freed but not given full rights yet, and the world is something of a mess.

Our heroine, Vinita "Mercy" Lynch, works at the Robertson Hospital in Virginia. She is a Confederate nurse, but a nurse nonetheless, and a damn good one. She receives word that her husband has been killed some months ago, and on the same day receives a telegram that speaks of her ailing father who begs her to come to him in Tacoma, WA. To travel entirely across the country is difficult, let alone in the middle of a war, but Mercy has nothing left to do but go, despite the fact that she hasn't seen her real father since she was six. He went West in search of gold and never came back, presumed dead, till now.

Mercy must travel by boat, airship, and finally train -- a Union train, armed and armored to the teeth. It's an enormous, impossibly fast, impossibly strong monstrosity of a machine called the Dreadnought and it is carrying something secret and quite deadly. The train ride west is full of attacks, espionage, and good old fashioned Western gunslinging. Oh, and there are big Iron Giant type machines fighting for the Union and the Confederacy, and there may or may not be a drug called sap that, when one overdoses on it, causes one to lose one's mind, senses, and become a walking corpse that's insatiably hungry for the living flesh of others. Oh, yes.

Did I mention how fucking FUN alternate history is?

Cherie Priest's storytelling skills are straight up excellent. The story is almost written in real time, so I felt the need to grip my book with white knuckles and stay in one place until I had completed the story, racing against time to get to the ending that I was dying to find out about. When I got to the end, however, I realized that "Dreadnought" takes place in the same world/time as Priest's first book, "Boneshaker" (which I also had on my list) and subsequently wished that I had also grabbed "Boneshaker" -- damn it that I picked up "Dreadnought" first! I have a thing about reading/watching things in the proper written/produced order. But no matter. It wasn't extremely vital to the plot, as I said, but rest assured I will be reading "Boneshaker" as well.

Can we talk about the fucking brilliant titles? Like.... shit.

Cherie Priest gets an A+ in Alternate History 101. I think she is going to graduate with honors.


Lady Aly

The Dapper Men and the Blood Lily

Hello Laaadieeees and internet!

Friday was my day off. I hadn't really made plans, except to do some minor laundry and sort out my schedule for the coming month. Life! (Don't talk to me about life.) (...anyone? ...anyone?) So instead of actually making plans with other people or to go window-shop the Magnificent Mile like I usually do, I curled up at home with a few books I had been meaning to read. I'll preface this with the fact that I read very, very quickly. I don't read fast because it looks cool to read fast. I read fast because I just read damn fast. In preschool, I talked my teacher into private tutoring me on reading a whole year before the other kids. By the time kindergarten hit, I was bringing in "Stuart Little," "Charlotte's Web," and things like that while the other kids were bringing in "Go Dog Go" and "Red Fish, Blue Fish, One Fish, Two Fish." When I brought in Louisa May Alcott's classic novel "Little Women" to read, my teacher felt it was the last straw and sent me home with a note that day which politely but firmly requested I no longer bring outside reading from home as it was becoming demoralizing to the other children.

Happily indifferent to these social mistakes, I continued to read things bigger and more difficult as I grew older, and it is the founding factor (I believe) in my book addiction. (You recently read about Erin's addiction, so I thought I'd give you an overview of mine.)

ANYHOW. Back to Friday. I sat down to read a recently published graphic novel/picture book called "The Return of the Dapper Men" - by Jim McCann and Janet Lee. The trailer is below:

First, I would like to take a small detour and say that anytime anybody writes something whimsical, fantastical, and deeply honest in the memory of our childhood magic, SOMEBODY always compares it to or categorizes it with "Alice in Wonderland." This, I feel, is a grave mistake. "Alice" is certainly an outstanding example of all of those things, yes, but it is its own beast, and just because something is childlike and full of mystery doesn't mean it's anything like "Alice." Here, especially, I don't think "Dapper Men" is anything like "Alice." Just wanted to say that there are other things you can compare things to than that ONE BOOK everybody is supposed to have read. Ahem. I will put away my little soap box now and continue.

"Dapper Men" is more of the vein of Antoine de Saint-Exupery's delicate children's-story-for-adults "Le Petit Prince" than it is "Alice in Wonderland." The world of the "Dapper Men" is quite simple, but as time has gone missing and there are only children who never grow old (no time) and robots who never stop working (no time) it becomes a conundrum that nobody can remember what they have forgotten about themselves and their world. When the clock begins to tick and tock again, time comes back, and with it the Dapper Men descend from the sky to fix all that has fallen to waste in their absence.

The charming 41, the Dapper Man who greets the hero Ayden and his best friend, robot girl Zoe, is immediately likened (in my mind) to the Doctor (of Doctor Who) -- he is cheerful, caring, and here to fix everybody's problems. His humor is also very Doctor-like, and in fact, it would not be too far of a stretch to compare the other Dapper Men to Time Lords.... But I won't get into it.

The book is beautifully written by Jim McCann and absolutely jaw-droppingly illustrated by Janet Lee --it is worth it for the artwork alone, but the story is absolutely wonderful. I am really glad I didn't wait to borrow it from someone and got my own copy, because it is gorgeous. A must have for any would-be steampunk's coffee table array, and certainly a must-have for lovers of the fantastic.



The second book I read on my day off was Lauren Willig's "The Betrayal of the Blood Lily." Willig has a series of historical fiction/espionage/romance novels, which started with "The Secret History of the Pink Carnation" -- which obviously I highly recommend. I found it (as I do most of my favorite books) quite by accident and have read all through the series now except for the most recent, "The Mischief of the Mistletoe." Yes, they all have clever flower names in titles. That's part of the thing. You'll see.

I don't want to give anything away, since the books are rooted in mystery and sort of an ongoing fictional history of the same set of characters and their friends, but "Blood Lily" is delicious. It starts a bit slow, though, and the present-day storyline with research student Eloise and her recently acquired British boyfriend Colin sort of staying out of the spotlight in this book -- generally the books are dual storylines, cutting from present day Eloise to the past she is researching, spies in Britain and France during the 18th century. Even so, the historical storyline is wonderful. Penelope is not quite wicked and not quite noble, but she is feisty and admirable nonetheless. Her adventures in India seem to kindle her true self, just as the handsome Captain Alex Reid kindles a true emotion in her where her husband (the unfortunately boring Freddy Staines, whom she was found compromised with and forced to marry) fails.

Again, I highly recommend Willig's books -- the mysteries are addictive and the humor is very smart, but beyond all that, the romance is terribly romantic and well-written. At no point does anything reach absurdity, which is the sign of a writer who can write several genres at once and do it well.

That's all for now, and I'm sure this post is obscenely long.

Ta!

Lady Alyson


(currently reading: The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler; next up: The Tower, The Zoo, and the Tortoise by Julia Stuart.)