Overall, a pretty enjoyable and interesting actiony urban fantasy.

The overall premise isn't hugely original - fish out of spatio-temporal water changes world - but was fairly well-presented and packed with enough action to keep me reading cheerfully. The characters were mostly pretty thin, to be honest, and even the main pro/antagonists had fairly limited characterisation or development, which is a bit of a shame. It seems to be part of a series, and further development may be planned for the later books, although given the death rate so far I'm not sure how many books can be written before Allston runs out of characters...

I felt there was some slight wavering in tone, as though the author wasn't quite sure of where to place things on the cheerful-grim scale: much of the book is moderately dark in tone, with sudden violent deaths and friends who can't be saved. On the other hand, there are cheery sparks and the ending slightly muddles things by having a fairly cheery feel to it, the humans being perhaps a bit too enthusiastic about their place in the world considering all that death and violence. Despite the elves, pulpy feel and the air of cheer which things like steampunky "talkboxes" and airships tend to lend to a work, this is on the whole more like a noir in tone, which took me a while to realise. I was expecting something more like either feel-good adventure or Dick Barton.

Most of the time the writing carried me along fast enough to not worry about the details, which is a good sign. A few times, though, I had to reread a few paragraphs two or three times before I worked out what the author was describing. This wasn't some kind of stylistic choice, Allston just didn't quite manage to convey things clearly and it was a jolt. On one occasion (the spiked metal bowl) I only worked out several pages later what the object was, because although he obviously had it clearly in mind, there wasn't enough detail to work out things like scale that would have made it clearer.

This whiled away a train journey pleasantly enough and was reasonable fun. On the whole I'm not sure I'll seek out more Allston, because there were enough hiccups to detract from the readable adventure plot, while there wasn't really enough novelty in ideas or compelling characters to really grab me on those accounts. On the other hand, I certainly wouldn't avoid any Allston that came my way. ( )

Not a bad book on alternate world of fairies. ( )

An urban fantasy with some world hopping. Someone sinister is visiting 'the grim world' - more exactly New York - and eliminating and abducting people.
( )

Read Online: http://webscriptions.net/10.1125/Baen/0671876627/0671876627.htm