Review: Phoenix Rising by Pip Ballantine & Tee Morris

Ahoy, readers of the strange and exciting!

I've got a special update for you... special insomuch as I don't use this blog nearly as often as perhaps I should, but this is an update of sorts, and in any case, I present to you a book for your perusal and future entertainment. Generally nowadays I would post about it over at LAAAADIES (and books) but since the Ladies have taken something of a break from reviewing to catch up on actual reading, I thought I'd continue broadcasting here, lest I forget all my thoughts about this book I just read before I get a chance to actually review it.

I've said it before: social media is a strange and sometimes wonderful thing. The steampunk community is particularly active on Twitter, as I've experienced before, and it was through Twitter that I found two authors I'd previously not heard of, one Pip Ballantine and one Tee Morris, whose joint venture was released in May and bears the title "Phoenix Rising: A Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Novel."



There, isn't that lovely?

I've also said before: I'm a sucker for a good title and great cover art. Insta-purchase.

The tale presents us with a unique view of later Victorian London, wherein a very hush-hush government agency called the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences works to track down the strange and mysterious all across the Empire in a kind of Torchwood-meets-the-League-of-Extraordinary-Gentleman kind of way. The first chapter finds us racing along with rebellious agent Eliza D. Braun, from New Zealand, rescuing agent Wellington Thornhill Books, Esq., from an enemy base in... Antarctica. With much aplomb and dynamite, Eliza succeeds, and upon returning to England, is demoted from field agent to work with Wellington in the Archives. Yes, friends: Braun loves explosions, and Books loves books. Well, cataloguing. Well, archiving things. Well, you get the idea. What an odd couple! Not to mention Eliza's colonial personality clashes with Wellington (soon firmly referred to as Welly) and his bookish sensibilities. (I'll stop with the puns, shall I? They aren't getting me very far.)

It soon comes to light that Eliza's last partner was someone very important to her, and he's currently residing in Bedlam among the undesirables. A few clues are discovered here, a few names dropped there, and before Welly knows what's hit him, he's helping Eliza uncover the tracks of her former partner's last case, one which remains unsolved by the Ministry. It's very much against regulation, but Welly and Eliza make a deuced good team, each bringing out more from the other than either one realizes at first.

Phoenix Rising is full of action, delicious witty banter, and fascinating twists and turns. The characterization of Eliza and Wellington is deeply detailed and utterly entertaining; I do wish I knew more about the rest of the Ministry, and hope to see more from Morris and Ballantine regarding the other agents as well as the future of Eliza and Welly. I recommend Phoenix Rising for a rush of steampunk fun that's more on the action film side of things than the steamy romance side, though it's undeniable there's chemistry between Welly and Eliza at some points....

Not to mention, Tee Morris and Pip Ballantine are delightful people (as far as I can tell from Twitter, anyhow!) and I highly recommend you pick up the book to show a little love for the steampunk community. It's extremely inexpensive and it's paperback, so you've really got no excuse, have you?

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to submit my application to work for the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences...


Purchase the book from Amazon!
Purchase the book from Barnes & Noble!
Check out the Ministry's website!

The Coming of Spring

Morning all!

Just wanted to pop in and say I've got a few reviews up over at LAAAADIES (and books) that you oughta check out if you haven't already. The other Ladies are reading fabulous stuff too, so please go look and leave us some love.

Also wanted to let you know (if anyone's even reading this, which I'm not convinced anyone is) that I am trying TRYING trying to revise Till No Clocks Move, my NaNoWriMo novel, which will shortly be beta read by renowned romance author Ciar Cullen and thereafter begin the journey towards becoming published myself. If you see me on Twitter or Facebook, whoever-you-are, fucking TELL ME TO GET BACK TO WORK. It's slow going and I need to get through it. Please please tell me to finish it. Tell me you want to read it. I want you to read it, but not before it's ready.

One of my dreams is to get onto the El and see someone reading my book. Anyone at all. Maybe that's egotistical. I just want to see it happen someday. Just once.

Ok. That's all for now. Also, keep an eye out for me on the season finale (May 23rd) of The Chicago Code (the airs Mondays on FOX, 8pm CST). Yay.

MORE BLOGGING OMGGGG

Great news! My great friend Alexis has started a group blogging effort called LAAADIES (and books). The Laaadies include myself, Alexis, Atra, Erin, Emily, and Elise. Three A's, three E's. Maybe we should spell it LAAADIEEES? Whatever, you have to sing it when you say it anyway.

We will be blogging collectively and individually about books and writing and writers and readers and things. HOORAY.

Just wanted to let anyone who's out here know.

Review: Clockwork Heart by Dru Pagliassoti

"Clockwork Heart" by Dru Pagliassoti

I won this book during SteamPink Week over at vvb32 Reads back in June. When it arrived a few weeks ago, I was knee-deep in Lauren Willig's fifth book, The Temptation of the Night Jasmine, and had no time to spare for the intriguing steampunk story, but knew it would be next on my list. While I'm glad I didn't interrupt Night Jasmine for another book -- I'd rather finish something before moving on -- I was UTTERLY FLOORED by how much I LOVED Clockwork Heart. The guest post by the author we were given at SteamPink had whetted my appetite, but I had no idea for how much.

Clockwork Heart throws you headfirst into a world called Ondinium, which is strange enough from we know that it takes you a while as a reader to figure out how things work, what it must look like, and takes even longer to figure out their society is not quite so different from our own, it just has a different slant to it. The country is set upon a great mountain, which houses the Great Engine which runs their society. Their central city or society has three actual, physically separated levels: Primus, Secundus and Tertius. Obviously those born to a higher caste of society live on Primus and those of the lowest live on Tertius. One way to travel between levels are wireferries, which I imagine look like trolleys on wires. At the start of the book, Taya, a courier trained to fly on metal wings made of ondium (the country's most precious natural resource which also has a quality of anti-gravity to it), rescues an exalted (high-caste) and her son from a broken wireferry accident that appears to be terrorism. In saving the exalted's life, Taya is thrown into a political storm she was previously unaware of, and meets the exalted's two nephews, the exalted Alister and his older brother, the outcaste (by choice) Cristof. Taya is instantly attracted to the handsome, calm, powerful Alister Forlore, and finds herself at odds with the brusque, cold, careless way of Cristof. But when more politics come into play and several more accidents take place, Taya puts herself and her career (including her dreams of becoming an ambassador) on the line when she and Cristof team up to find the truth about what's really going on in Ondinium.

At first, because the world is so unique and the society so specific, as a reader I felt somewhat disoriented. Happily, though. I enjoyed figuring everything out as I went along and being totally immersed in another world. The clarity and clean elegance with which Dru Pagliassoti describes things is addictive, and her heroine Taya shows a growth throughout the story that stakes her claim as a really unique and strong female protagonist. She has, in the beginning, something of a one-track mind, which does not see past her hopes of being a diplomat and her job as an icarus, but throughout the novel she begins to understand other things and grow beyond that life. The brothers Forlore are extremely visible; Alister's look and tone of voice are so clear, and Cristof becomes like an old friend brought back to life by photos and memories; soon all it takes is him to pinch the bridge of his nose under his glasses in frustration for you to smile at his stubbornness, with the author barely telling you all that detail. The political mystery is fascinating, and the twists and turns are inescapably exciting, and when you finally get a full-on detailed description of how it feels to fly on ondium wings (and what happens afterward) I found myself reading on the train, gripping the book white-knuckled (literally) and short of breath with how fully the sensations were described.

All in all, Dru Pagliassoti has won my attention. This book was a ride that I will be taking again and again, and I will be passing it along to some friends who are likewise attracted to such stories. I would gladly seek out her other work as an author, and I will aspire to take some good advice from her writing voice and her skills as a storyteller. I feel that Clockwork Heart was a total masterpiece. I am dreaming of metal wings, and I expect I will continue to dream for a long time to come.

Review of O.M. Grey's "Avalon Revisited."

Gizmos and vampires and airships... oh my.

Yes, friends, I'm officially hooked on steampunk. Here's another review I wrote recently for O.M. Grey's first novel, "Avalon Revisited." This was originally posted on Amazon.com but I just moved it over here too for safekeeping. Whee!

O.M. Grey's book from the very beginning has the distinctly powerful quality of a clear voice; although at first you don't know anything about Arthur, the narrator, you can hear him clearly word for word and through his narrations you begin to unfold his character. The few hundred years of his vampiric life have made him sly, clever, a little vain and extremely charming, and all of these things are brought out through his first person descriptions and commentary. The mysterious underbelly of the story picks up speed at an expert pace, full of twists and suspenseful moments but ultimately quite thrilling, all the while the reader rides along with Arthur as he tries to reconcile his vampire life with his newfound overwhelming crush on a woman who has no interest in him. Things get touchy when it is discovered that Avalon, the gorgeous but solitary woman of Arthur's affections, is in the business of becoming a vampire hunter, and things get even touchier when the killings across London are being pegged as vampire murders, although Arthur is not fully to blame.

The story is intriguing and delicious, the characters are delightful and easy to picture, and the London backdrop serves perfectly for a supernaturally romantic mystery. I hope to see much more of the same genre from O.M. Grey, whose prose is never over- or underdone, and whose well-rounded construction of Arthur is addictive and quite companionable for the reader. Classic and passionate (but never to the point of smut, in my opinion) "Avalon Revisited" is a delectable triumph and has left me savoring its flavor and definitely hungry for more.

Review of Gail Carriger's "Changeless."

I should begin by explaining something about how I stumbled into this genre and found Gail Carriger by complete accident.

It was last fall, 2009, and I was skipping class with a good friend of mine. Unlike some college kids who skip class to indulge in acts of a somewhat illegal nature, we skipped for the purpose of going to a bookstore and treasure-hunting for something good while we were there. My friend was perusing the New Releases section of Borders while I wandered into the SciFi/Fantasy section to scan titles. I think now that maybe I was looking for Neil Gaiman stuff; I'm trying to complete my collection of his work, but I can't be sure, since I didn't even look at the G section of the shelves. All I remember is coming around the corner to start alphabetically, and as I leaned over to get a better look at some titles, a book fell off the shelf and landed at my feet.

The book was called "Soulless" and the cover featured a very saucy looking Victorian woman whose parasol was decorated with cogs and coils and odd looking accents in brass.

Of course it was fate. Of course I bought it. And of course I made some of my friends buy it too.

The second book of Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate series, "Changeless," was released this spring, and my good friend Alexis (@NerdGirl28 via twitter) and I were hungry to read it by then, hoping it wouldn't disappoint after the clever, exhilirating wit and mystery of "Soulless."

It certainly did not disappoint either of us.

The mysterious goings-on of "Soulless" are magnified and intensified in "Changeless." The plot moves more quickly and with sharper twists and turns, and the characters from the first book have blossomed into more intriguing figures in the second. Alexia dons her role as Lady Maccon and Muhjah with great dignity and grace, and likewise the brooding Lord Maccon continues to be a little bit more mysterious than we expect him to be. The exploration of his past with the Scottish pack is both fascinating and tragic, and the continued comedic relief from Ivy Hisselpenny (whose hats continue to get worse) and the claviger Tunstall (whose amorous intents are as endearingly embarrassing as Ivy's melodramatic moanings are endearingly idiotic) is hilarious and a welcome subplot to the increasingly unfunny paranormal mystery growing all around them.

The new characters are fully intriguing and fit right in with the old gang, including the she-wolf who now leads Lord Maccon's old pack and the totally mysterious, totally attractive (oops, Alexia, are you getting tummy-butterflies when she looks at you? and aren't you married to a dude? ...I LOVE their interactions), totally delightful cross-dressing inventor Madame Lefoux. Angelique, ex-maid to the vampires, from the first book, returns as a supporting character, and so does beloved Professor Lyall. The only cast member really missing is Lord Akeldama, whose involvement is significantly lessened by the journey to Scotland. Alas. He still manages to have a say in what goes on though, and we would expect no less of him.

The mystery at hand keeps you guessing fully till the very end of the book, when the clues start to come together a little quicker and more significantly; I was stunned by the reveal, and even MORE stunned by the twist ending the lovely Ms. Carriger gives us. My jaw still hasn't been picked up off the floor.

I would say "I can't wait for Blameless" but the words seem flat and stale by comparison to the agony I am currently floundering in until I can read the next installment.

I am just glad that fate decided to slap "Soulless" off the shelf at me that day in Borders... I don't know where I would be without Gail Carriger's books right now.

Right. Now off I go to work on my steampunk outfit plans and have some more tea.