Gordon Dahlquist

I usually like my steampunk with a little more "punk", but this was still enjoyable. Not many devices, no one has a mohawk, this is more of a good ole Victorian action novel with some mad science thrown in. The writing gets quite witty at times, but that's weighed down by an excess of detail that makes things drag a bit.

Another thing that made it less enjoyable was the number of characters. It became hard to keep track of who was who after a while, but that may have also been a symptom of taking so long to read it.

Warning - at 464 pages this is only half the story. You get left at a literal cliffhanger (seriously someone is left dangling in the air). So you might want to make sure you have book 2 on hand, whether that's in the form of a separate book or the hardcover which includes both books. Also, as far as I can tell there is only an abridged version of this first book on audio. Then I think there is an audio version of the 3rd book that is unabridged.… (plus d'informations)

This book is long. Very, very long. The basic story is interesting, set in late Victorian times in a fictional country that could be on the Baltic or North Sea. The narrative jumps between the stories of the three heroes, who meet at various points and then separate. It deals with conspiracies at the highest levels of society, concerning a mysterious substance which captures the experiences of people who have been exposed to it. There are chases, fights, airships, captures, escapes, country houses, sinister geniuses, femmes fatales, all the elements of a cracking good adventure story. But it's just so long. It would read much better if a third of the book was just edited out. I really wanted to like it but in the end it was such a slog to get to the end that I didn't enjoy it much.… (plus d'informations)