Blood and Steam - Jamie Sedgwick

   2012; 291 pages.  Book 3 (out of three) of the Tinkerer’s Daughter series.   New Author? : No.  Genre : Steampunk; Fantasy.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

    The war is over.  The Vangars have won.  They’ve defeated all the other kingdoms, including Astatia, one of the human realms.  To resist the Vangars and their cyborg-like warriors (the Sentinels), is to die.  To not resist means doing forced labor for the conquerors, and in the case of the city of Avenston, that means working in the nearby mines until you perish from exhaustion.

    Yet a fledgling resistance movement exists in Avenston.  They call themselves the “sleepwalkers”, because they only dare to meet at late at night night, under the cover of darkness.  Breck the butcher is a member; so is Tasha the tailor, plus the husband/wife team of Hatch and Shel Woodcarver.

    The most noteworthy member of the sleepwalkers is a girl named River.  She's the daughter of Breeze, the half-breed, who was a formidable rebel leader in her own time.  She's friends with Kale, another veteran rebel.  Hey, maybe this sleepwalker movement has a chance to succeed.

    Nope, not a chance.  When their secret meeting place is busted by the sentinels, everyone flees for their life.  Worse, sentinels move faster than humans, and killing a heavily-armored machine is next to impossible.  So there are really only two equally undesirable choices at that point.

    Stand and fight the sentinels, and die quickly.  Or flee into the frozen wastelands beyond the city walls and succumb to starvation and the elements.

What’s To Like...

    Blood and Steam is the final book in the Tinkerer’s Daughter trilogy, although, to be pedantic, in this one the protagonist switches from Breeze to her daughter, River.  So I guess we could call it The Tinkerer’s Granddaughter.

    This is a typical Jamie Sedgwick novel.  The action is fast and furious, starts right away, and doesn’t let up until the final page.  The genre is overwhelmingly Steampunk, with steam engines powering ground vehicles and dirigibles ruling the skies.  River’s "adopted" father, Tinker, devised a steam-powered motorcycle-ish vehicle that he calls a “boneshaker”, but it’s still an only-one-of-its-kind invention.  There is a wondrous new source of energy, starfall, which comes from the remains of a giants meteorite that hit the world sometime in the past, but everyone’s still learning how to make use of it.  

    The story is told in the first-person POV, River’s.  The book’s structure is a little weird.  There are 14 chapters plus a prologue, and the book averages about 15 pages per chapter.  But at the end of chapter 12, a “brief interlude” is inserted, which catches you up on what Breeze was doing while River was having her adventure.  Jamie Sedgwick has an odd definition of "brief", it is 60 pages long, which equals 20% of the book.  For continuity, it’s a necessary addition, but still, it felt weird.

    I liked the brief reference to the “winter solstice tree”; it really is more historically accurate than its this-world counterpart.  The critters are pretty much the same as in the first two books in the series, but I smiled when Socrates made his appearance; he’s the main protagonist in Jamie Sedgwick's next series and he's far and away my favorite Jamie Sedgwick character..

    The ending can best be described as “functional”.  It smoothly segues into the follow-up series, “The Iron Horse”, which I'm guessing was probably the main raison d’etre for Blood and Steam.  I’ve already read the first three book in that series, so some of the plot-thread resolutions were easy to predict here.  But if you haven’t read any of the books from the Iron Horse, you will probably find this ending to be quite good.

Excerpts...

    “It’s not your battle anymore,” Analyn said.  “The others have gone into the mountains.  We can only hope they make it to Sanctuary, according to our plan.  The sentinels might catch them or they might not.  There’s nothing you can do about it, either way.”

    “Yes there is,” I said.  I walked up to the fireplace and snatched her rifle off the mantle.  I blew the layer of dust away and examined it.  “Where’s your ammo kit?”

    “Sometimes you’re just like your mother,” Analyn said without looking up.

    “Then you know you can’t stop me.”

    She snorted, shaking her head.  “Check the drawer by the table.”  (loc. 1993)

    The creatures – whatever they were – seemed to be moving in my direction.  I subconsciously reached out to the tree with my mind, preparing to leap up into the branches.  It had been my experience that trees help the Tal’mar.  They bend their branches down to catch us, and move them around before us to create a path as we run.  I didn’t get such a response from this tree.  Instead, I got the cold irritated sense that the tree wanted me to get off its roots.  (loc. 2390)

Kindle Details...

    Blood and Steam is priced at $3.99 at Amazon right now.  The initial book in the series, The Tinkerer’s Daughter, is free, and the second book, Tinker’s War, goes for $2.99.  Jamie Sedgwick offers another 17 e-books for your reading pleasure. They are all in the free-to-$3.99 price range, mostly in the lower half of that.

“You think too much like a human.”  (loc. 2703)

    There’s not much to quibble about in Blood and Steam.  If you’re looking for things like depth of character or romance, you might be disappointed; this is pure action-packed storytelling.  Some of the thrills, such as River and Crow’s escape from Juntavar are a bit over the top, but hey, I can say that about any Indiana Jones movie as well. 

    I wouldn’t call this a standalone novel.  You are well advised to read the other two first.  But since the first book in the series, The Tinkerer’s Daughter, is a freebie, hey, there’s really no excuse for not starting with that one.

    Bottom line: Blood and Steam fully was a delightful read for me – nonstop thrills and spills, and a satisfying storyline.  You can call it a “beach read” or an “airplane read”; I call it “literary entertainment”. 

    8 Stars.  I’ve adjusted my expectations for Jamie Sedgwick novels.  I’ve griped in the past about the individual plotlines not contributing to an overall series-spanning storyline.  I now think that it’s better to consider each book an “episode”, kinda like a weekly Star Trek show.  It might not contribute to an overarching storyline (Star Trek’s "five-year mission" never figures into the series at all), but it probably was never intended to.  And if each episode here keeps you turning the pages, I suspect Jamie Sedgwick will feel he’s accomplished his goal.