Category: Steampunk
The Hod King — Josiah Bancroft
Deathmaker — Lindsay Buroker
Balanced on the Blade’s Edge — Lindsay Buroker
Blood Charged — Lindsay Buroker
Under the Ice Blades — Lindsay Buroker
Passage Out — Anthea Sharp
The Clockwork Alice — DeAnna Knippling
I really enjoyed All the Retros at the New Cotton Club, so i was really happy to discover that Deanna’s also wrote some “Alice and Wonderland” stuff.
Instead of the fun clockwork story about Alice and all things Wonderland that i was expecting, i found a story heavily biased towards the real life of Alice Liddell and her relationship with Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll): this story is set several years after Charles’ death.
I’m not going to get into my views about Dodgson here, this is about DeAnna’s views, and she does a fairly good job of brushing over things (sweeping them under the carpet) and tidy things up in making a story out of Alice’s and Charles’ final years. Although, to be honest, i think that DeAnna just makes things worse: i’m left with the opinion that this story could be a nice little dose of Streisand effect for a lot of its readers.
And for those of you feeling the effects of Streisand, you can begin at Wikipedia. 
All that aside, it’s a fairly good read, and a must for all Alice and Wonderland fans: just expect it to be more about Alice reminiscing, through thoughts and dreams of Wonderland, than a pure Wonderland adventure. Sadly, there’s a few typos that detract on occasion, and that are so obvious they should have been easily fixed before publishing.
Final words, other than those few annoying typos, DeAnna’s a very good writer. The Queen of Stilled Hearts is in “The Pile” and i’m looking forward to giving that a read soon.
DeAnna’s Page
#aliceinwonderland #fantasy #steampunk #deannaknippling
Sidequests — Joseph R. Lallo
A delightful collection of short stories that Joseph was nice enough to give away to all those of us who receive his newsletter: so sign up now!!!
Squee’s Day Out (Big Sigma)
Building the Perfect Pet (Big Sigma)
Meeting of the Mas (Big Sigma)
The New Inspector (Free-Wrench)
Lil and Coop (Free-Wrench)
The Beast of the Cave (Book of Deacon)
Joseph’s Page
#fantasy #scifi #steampunk #josephrlallo
Island of Doom — Arthur Slade
And so this quite entertaining series comes to an end. It was fun, kept on moving along at a good pace, well written and edited.
The only downside was the ending went a bit down hill. Like Hyde has created and unleashed the fraken-creatures-from-hell-that-can’t-be-stopped-because-they’re-already-dead and then …
… well i won’t spoil it. But it was rather silly to say the least.
So yeah, i was expecting a much more rip-roaring ending, but it all ended well in the end so i won’t labour the point.
To sum up all four books: it’s a great adventure if you’re not looking for something to take too seriously. If you’re feeling in the need for some far fetched silly then this might be the series for you. I certainly enjoyed reading it as i like a bit of far-fetched silly now and again. I’d put it on the bookshelf next to Magnificent Devices, as that’s enjoyable, far-fetched silly in much the same way.