Starfall - Jamie Sedgwick

   2018; 279 pages.  Book 5 (out of 5) in the “Aboard the Great Iron Horse” series; Book 8 (out of 8) in the “Age of Steam” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Steampunk Fantasy; Teen & Young Adult Steampunk.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

 

    Steampunk Armageddon is approaching!  The forces of Evil, aka the “Clockwork Legion”, have amassed an army of incredible size and are advancing steadily on the few remaining human-controlled cities.

 

    For the moment, their defenses hold strong, although even that is disheartening.  The Clockwork Legion is being reinforced daily by hordes of ghouls and other undead creatures, and all the humans can do is watch from high atop the ramparts of their cities' walls and wonder if any friendly armies are on their way to help break the siege.

 

    Meanwhile, Socrates and his band of heroes – Micah, Thane, Morgane, River, Kale, Tinker, and Breeze – are scattered throughout the lands, and word has it that Socrates’ steam-powered locomotive, The Iron Horse, is wrecked beyond repair.

 

    It’s just a matter of time before the Clockwork Legion has the overwhelming numbers to successfully scale the walls and slaughter all the humans.

 

    And turn them into – guess what – more ghouls!

 

What’s To Like...

    Starfall is the final installment in Jamie Sedgwick’s Age of Steam series, which is a combination of his Aboard The Iron Horse and Tinkerer’s Daughter series.  Its primary aim appears to be to bring the storylines of the various main characters (is that an oxymoron?) to conclusion, and in that regard, it succeeds admirably.

 

    There are scene-shifts aplenty, since our band of heroes are spread out far and wide.  I didn’t find this confusing, although I think it definitely helps if you read these stories in proper order.  I was impressed with the way the fate of my favorite protagonist, a mechanical ape named Socrates, was resolved.

 

    There’s lots of fighting throughout the tale, both on land and in the air.  Our heroes are on the move, and so are the myriad hordes of bad guys; so it is not surprising that Starfall contains plenty of fighting .  But there is also room for several budding romances, the biggest one of which involves the warrior Kale’s impending marriage to Queen Aileen.

 

    Those who like dragons in their fantasy stories will not be disappointed.  I also liked Socrates’ encounters with the inhabitants of Ironhold.  I intend to stay away from the addictive drug kavi-oil, but I’d love to take a ride on one of the steamscout cars.

 

    Everything builds to a climactic mega-battle between Good and Evil.  The battle sways to and fro several times as various plot twists impact its outcome.  Things close with a heartwarming Epilogue which details the futures of several main characters as well as the fate of the “starfallen” world at large.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.6/5 based on 135 ratings and 20 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.51/5 based on 59 ratings and 3 reviews.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

    Balusters (n., pl.) : short pillars or columns, typically decorative in design, in a series supporting a rail or coping.  (Google-Image it.)

 

Excerpts...

    The dragon came lurching towards him.

    Micah brandished the knife in front of him, ready to strike.  The dragon, somehow sensing his distress, lowered its head.  Micah stared at it, uncertain what to do.  Cautiously, the creature stretched its neck out and sniffed his hand.

    “Micah,” Morgane said in a whisper.  “I think it likes you.”

    As if in response, the dragon nudged him, touching the top of its snout to his hand.  Micah shook his head in disbelief.  At Morgane’s urging, he reached out to stroke the dragon’s chin.  The beast closed its eyes and a loud, rhythmic purring sound rumbled out of its chest.  (loc. 1675)

 

    Suddenly, the ghoul’s eyes went wide.  The creature shot a horrified look down at its feet, and then released its grip on the knife.  It turned and ran.  Confused, Tinker glanced down and saw Breeze’s open hand.

    “What happened?  Did you do something?”

    “I’m not sure.  Ghouls don’t work quite the way humans do.”

    Tinker’s eyebrows shot up.  You used your healing skills on him?”

    “Not healing,” she grinned.  “Un-healing.”

    “Oh . . . I didn’t know you could do that.”

    “It was worth a try.”  (loc. 2723)

 

Kindle Details…

    Starfall is priced at $3.99 at Amazon right now.  The other seven books in the “Age of Steam” series range in price from free (Book 1), to $0.99, (Books 2-6), to $2.99 (Book 7).  J.G. Sedgwick, aka Jamie Sedgwick, aka Jeramy Gates, has two other fantasy series for your Kindle, the “Shadow Born” trilogy and the “Hank Mossberg, Private Ogre” series.  The e-books in those are all in the free-to-$3.99 price range.

 

“What would I learn from watching people who are perfect?”  (loc. 230)

    I didn’t notice any profanity in Starfall, which makes sense since it’s marketed as being a “Teen & Young Adult” story.  When the occasion calls for cussing, the author uses the phrase “what the devils”, which I thought was quite clever.

 

    The page-numbering system was wonky on both of my Kindles; whatever page a chapter started on remained that number until the next chapter started.  I suspect this was a conversion glitch, and since the “percent read” worked fine, so this is merely nit to pick.

 

    The biggest issue is the usual one: an abundance of typos.  The main infraction involved the use of em-dashes.  It looks like the author used hyphens for this function, and the conversion program seemingly went haywire.  Besides this there were a few of the standard miscues, such as compliment/complement, leeching/leaching, impassible/impassable, and one instance of a misnamed Shayla/Morgane.

 

    These gaffes didn’t prevent me from enjoying the story.  I suspect it’s no easy task to write the final book in a series, gather all the major characters, tie up all the plotlines, allow Good to vanquish Evil, at least for the short term, and still be interesting and fast-paced enough to keep the reader turning the pages.  Starfall did that for me.

 

    8 Stars.  I assume this is a completed series.  But the Socrates plotline does leave the door open for further adventures.  Even though a “Book 9” has not arose betwixt the publication of Starfall (2018) and the present (2024), I personally hope Jamie Sedgwick is working on one.

Clockwork Legion - Jamie (J.G.) Sedgwick

 2016; 342 pages.  Book 4 (out of 5) in the series “Aboard the Great Iron Horse”.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Steampunk Fantasy.  Overall Rating : 7*/10.

 

    All aboard the Great Iron Horse!  Socrates and his crew have departed Dragonwall in order to continue their mission of searching for remnants of civilization in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

 

    They are short a couple of crewmembers, but that can’t be helped.  Kale has remained at Dragonwall to take on the role of "First Knight" for Queen Aileen.  And Shayla has chosen to stay there with Kale as well.  Methinks some romantic possibilities may be a factor.

 

    Shayla’s staying behind quickly becomes a timely event.  Queen Aileen's city has been plagued by a series of poisonings lately.  She wants Kale to investigate.  But she’s also just received a letter from the mayor of Ravenwood, a town well to the south of Dragonwall, begging the queen to dispatch troops there immediately due to some unspecified threat.  Queen Aileen wants Kale to lead a squad of knights down there.

 

    Well, Kale can’t be in two places at once, so perhaps Shayla can look into the poisonings while he travels to see what’s endangering Ravenwood.  Best of luck to both of you, Kale and Shayla!

 

    You’re going to need it.

 

What’s To Like...

    Clockwork Legion is the fourth installment in the five-book “Aboard the Great Iron Horse” series, although see below for the recent reorganization of this.  There are three main plotlines to follow, involving Socrates, Shayla, and Kale, as briefly described above.  The common thread in all of them is a magical substance called starfall, which serves as a “super-fuel” for Socrates’s steampunk locomotive, but has a very unhealthy effect when inhaled or ingested by creatures, whether they be living or already dead.   

 

    As with any Jamie Sedgwick novel, there's plenty of action and intrigue.  If undead baddies are your shtick, you’ll like this book, and if dinosaurs make you tick, you’ll enjoy it too.  Even better, if undead dinosaurs appeal to your literary tastes, you’re going to love Clockwork Legion.

 

    Being a chemist by trade, I liked the bits of chemistry woven into the book.  Ozone from lightning lays a small role in the storyline, so does powdered iron.  I also thought the timepiece called a chronoforge was a nice detail.  The title reference comes at 84% Kindle, and it was great to see two main characters from a related series make cameo appearances in the Epilogue.  Here’s hoping they play a bigger part in next book.

 

    The story ends at a logical spot, but it needs to be said that zero plot threads are resolved.  Queen Aileen and Kale make some important plans, but will those come to pass?  Socrates and the Iron Horse are out in the boondocks, so how will they impact the impending invasion of the baddies?  Shayla’s life is undergoing some changes, but will this be for the better or for the worse?

 

    Presumably, all these plotlines will be tied up in the next, fifth, and final book in the series: Starfall.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.5/5 based on 206 ratings and 36 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.50/5 based on 109 ratings and 5 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    “How do I make them respect me?”

    “I can’t tell you that, but I can tell you how Dane did it.”

    “How?”

    “He threatened to kill ‘em, or worse.  And they knew he meant it.  But that only worked because they knew Dane had the guts to do what he said, and he knew they didn’t have the guts to stab him in his sleep.”

    “And you think that’s what I should do?”

    “Absolutely not!  These men wouldn’t hesitate to kill you in your sleep.”  (loc. 262)

 

    Shayla had a refined, elegant beauty about her that was a natural advantage.  She also had years of training to supplement that beauty.  As a child, Shayla had been trained in every manner of espionage and survival.  The soldiers knew they might not always be there to protect her, and she might need the ability to defend herself or to blend in with other people and cultures.  One of the most useful skills was one that had always come natural: flirtation.  (loc. 1497)

 

Kindle Details…

    Clockwork Legion is priced at $3.99 at Amazon right now.  The other four books in the series range in price from free to $4.99, with the cost increasing as the series progresses.  Jamie Sedgwick (aka: “J.G. Sedgwick”) has several other fantasy series for your reading enjoyment, and in the same price range.

 

“Great plan. (...) When the horde of undead warriors gets here, we’ll just ignore them to death.”  (loc. 1896)

    Incredibly, I didn’t note any cussing in Clockwork Legion.  Either I’m falling down on the job, or there was none.  I also don’t recall any “adult situations”.  When an author/can keep the story interesting without R-rated material who—and this book does that—I am deeply impressed.

 

    There were only a couple of typos, such as: tired/tire, phased/fazed, and leech/leach.  The insertion of dashes somehow resulted in them all being off-center and incorrect spacing.  But I suspect this occurred during the reformatting-for-Kindle stage, and was therefore beyond the author's control.     

 

    My copy of Clockwork Legion had a big problem with the chapter tabs.  There were none.  After the usual opening sections there’s  a “Table of Contents heading, but all it links to is the cover image.  After that, there is nothing else in the Table.  UPDATE: in looking at the current Amazon “Read Sample” blurb, that seems to have been corrected in later versions.

 

    The main quibble is the fact that none of the storylines get tied up.  That means this is not a standalone novel.  Therefore, if you’re not reading this series in order, you’ll probably be really disappointed in the storytelling in Clockwork Legion.

 

    So take my advice and read the earlier books before this one.  In the proper order.  Then you’ll find Clockwork Legion to be a light, fast-paced, enjoyable read whose purpose appears to be to get all the major characters properly positioned for the final episode.  We shall see about that.

 

    7 Stars.  I’ve had Clockwork Legion on my Kindle for quite some time.  Meanwhile the author has altered his name for this series from Jamie Sedgwick to J.G. Sedgwick, both of which are actually pen names for Jeramy Gates.  To boot, the author’s 5-book Aboard the Great Iron Horse series and the 3-book Tinkerer’s Daughter series are now combined into an 8-book Age of Steam series.  The other books and series penned by this author remain credited to "Jamie Sedgwick".

    I’m sure this has to do with some sort of revised marketing strategy, but frankly I fail to see the logic of it.

Iron Council - China Miéville

   2004; 564 pages.  Book 3 in the “Bas-Lag” trilogy.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Steampunk Fantasy; Sword and Sorcery; Weird Fantasy.  Laurels: 2005 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel (winner).  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

 

    Three men, all of them believers, all of them revolutionaries, all of them searching for something.

 

    Cutter is wandering through the wastelands, searching for Judah Low and the Iron Council.  He wants to warn them that the city-state mega-power, New Crobuzon, has dispatched forces to seek out and destroy them.

 

    Judah Low is the Iron Council’s somaturge (their what??).  He’s dedicated his life to the overthrow of New Crobuzon.  He’s searching for others that share his rebellious passion.

 

    Ori is a resident of New Crobuzon, and a jaded member of the underground resistance there.  He’s tired of his compatriots talking the talk, but not walking the walk.  He’s searching for a way to light a spark of action amongst his fellow dissidents.

 

    New Crobuzon can be summed up by three M’s:  Militia, Magisters, and the Mayor.  Maybe even add a fourth, Mages.  They can crush any and all of the resisters.  If only they can locate them.

 

What’s To Like...

    Iron Council is the closing book in China Miéville’s fantastic Bas-Lag trilogy.  The first two books are reviewed here and here.  The three novels are all standalones; the storylines are not connected and the characters are completely different in each tale.  What ties them together is the setting – New Crobuzon, the main city in Bas-Lag.

 

    For the most part, we follow the lives of the three men mentioned in the introduction, primarily how they impact and relate to the Iron Council, which is a group of dissident railroad-builders that have seized one of the government’s trains along with its rail-laying equipment.

 

    China Miéville’s superb writing skills are once again displayed here: incredibly detailed world-building, deep and fascinating character development, a masterful vocabulary, and a complex and compelling storyline.  Our trio of rebel protagonists are pitted against a well-equipped and numerically superior foe, and they find it hard to keep their followers, and themselves, from giving up and running away.

 

    Iron Council is written in English, not American, which is always a treat for me.  It’s both a steampunk and a sword-&-sorcery tale, with weapons such as pistols, crossbows, blunderbusses, rive-bows, and motor-guns.  The magic/thaumaturgy is on a par with the weaponry: you can “glamour” someone, be a whispersmith, or make use of verity-gauging.  Judah Low is a somaturge, a rare magic art that enables him to conjure up golems out of just about any substance, and which he learned while staying with the stiltspears.  Stiltspears and golems are just a smattering of the strange and interesting creatures that you’ll meet along the way in this story.

 

    I liked that the revolutionary heroes portrayed here are not perfect.  They squabble, get depressed, get mad, and have to contend with situational ethics.  One example of the latter is the tagline that appears below, right after the two excerpts.

 

    The ending is both hopeful and sad, as well as brilliantly unexpected while at the same time slightly anticlimactic.  Judah Low conceives and constructs it, and it's a wonderful answer to the dilemma of what to do when one is up against overwhelming odds.  It leaves the door open for a sequel, but China Miéville has not penned one in the 19+ years since Iron Council was published, so I think we can safely say the series is complete.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Cacotopic (adj.) : of an imaginary place where everything is as bad as it can be.

Others: Chaverim (n., plural); Boscage (n.), Somaturge (n.); Gurned (v.), Hadal (adj.); Tain (n.); and dozens more.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.1/5 based on 964 ratings and 170 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.72/5 based on 15,293 ratings and 1,077 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    “Toro’s out there and he’s doing something, yeah?  He’s fighting, and he’s not waiting like you keep waiting.  And you sit and wait, and tell him he’s getting ahead of himself?

    It’s not like that.  I won’t snip at anyone fighting the magisters, or the militia, or the Mayor, but Toro can’t change things on his own, or with his little crew, Jack . . .”

    “Yeah but he’s changing something.”

    “Not enough.”

    “But he’s changing something.”  (pg. 76)

 

    “We have a responsibility,” Ann-Hari said.  Cutter never felt eased in her presence.  The fervour in her unnerved him—it made him tired and uncertain of himself, as though she might win him over against his will.  He knew he was jealous—no one had had such as effect on Judah Low as Ann-Hari.

    “We’re a dream,” she said.  “The dream of the commons.  Everything came to this, everything came here.  We got to here.  This is what we are.  History’s pushing us.  (pg. 514)

 

If one death’ll stop ten, ain’t it better?  If two deaths’ll save a city?  (pg. 370)

    There are some quibbles.  China Miéville has never shied away from using cusswords in his novels, and here I counted 34 cases in the first 10% of the book.  That doesn’t include the clever use of “faux cussing”, including terms like “for Jabber’s sake”, “godsdamn”, and “in Jabber’s name.”  There’s also several instances of several types of sex—hetero, homo, manual—and a bit of cross-dressing.

 

    There’s an extended backstory/flashback section early on telling how the Iron Council came to be.  It comes without any warning to the reader, which confused me at first, but you’ll know you’ve hit it when the new chapters are no longer numbered.

 

    China Miéville is an unabashedly left-leaning activist (read the Wikipedia article), and a lot of readers seemed to be upset that this is reflected in the Iron Council storyline, which may explain how a Locus Award-winning novel can have such mediocre ratings at Amazon and Goodreads.

 

    Some of the vocabulary the author utilizes will keep you resorting to Google for enlightenment.  Personally I had fun discovering which words were incredibly obscure (such as “tain”), and which were made-up ones by Miéville (such as “somaturge”).

 

    Finally, and repeating a quibble from my reviews of the previous two tales, this series screams for a map and a Cast of Characters.

 

    I thoroughly enjoyed Iron Council, and the Bas-Lag trilogy as a whole.  Those quibbles just mean Miéville is treating the reader as an adult, and the lushness and complexity of the text and storyline mean that he also assumes that the reader is reasonably intelligent and imaginative.  This was my ninth China Miéville book, and none of them have disappointed me.

 

    9 Stars.  China Miéville is renowned and respected enough that the definitions for even his made-up words can be found by googling them.  “Somaturge” was confusing me until I looked it up.

The Scar - China Miéville

   2002; 578 pages.  Book Two (out of three) in the “Bas-Lag” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Steampunk Fiction; Weird Fantasy.  Laurels: 2003 British Fantasy Award (winner); 2003 Locus Award (winner); nominated for 2002 British Science Fiction Award, 2002 Phillip K. Dick Award, 2003 Arthur C. Clarke Award, 2003 Hugo Award, and 2003 World Fantasy Award.  Overall Rating : 9½*/10.

 

    Bellis Coldwine is going on an extended cruise.  She boarded the ship Terpsichoria in the capital city of New Crobuzon and is headed for the distant port of Nova Esperium.

 

    The Terpsichoria is not your typical cruise ship though.  It’s primarily used to transport slaves throughout the empire although paying passengers such as Bellis are also welcomed.  But this is not a pleasure voyage for Bellis; it’s one of desperation.  Her friends and acquaintances in New Crobuzon have been “disappearing” in the middle of the night, and it's not hard to figure out that it won’t be long before whoever the abductors are, probably the New Crobuzon militia, will soon be coming for her as well.

 

    Alas, Fate has a detour in store for Bellis.  The open sea is a dangerous place, and the Terpsichoria has just been captured by pirates.  They’re freeing the slaves and press-ganging both them and passengers into becoming residents of the floating pirate metropolis of Armada.

 

    Oh well.  Any port in a storm is fine by Bellis.  What’s important to her is where she’s fleeing from, not where she is, or where she’s going.

 

What’s To Like...

    The Scar is the second book in China Miéville’s “Bas-Lag” trilogy.  It’s not really a sequel, but it’s set in the same world as Book One, Perdido Street Station, which I read more than ten years ago and is reviewed here.

 

    China Miéville’s world-building in The Scar is both ambitious and masterfully done.  Most of the story takes place on the giant ocean-borne city of Armada, which has citizens dwelling both above and below the water surface.  The city itself is made up of dozens upon dozens of watercraft seized by the pirates, welded together, and converted into an urban area.  That may sound a bit contrived, but in Miéville’s hands it works perfectly.

 

    The character development is equally dazzling.  For the most part, we follow Bellis's adventures and intrigues, as she struggles to come to grips with the fact that Armada is both her new and permanent home.  We meet all sorts of sentient species that have found a haven in, under, and around Armada, including crays (half-human/half crayfish), cactacae (“cactus people”), dinichthys (“bonefish”), vampires (called “vampir”), anophelli (“mosquito people”), scabmettlers, grindylow, and the bizarre, artificially-fashioned “Remade”.  Who knows, maybe we'll even spot a creature called the godwhale, otherwise known as the "mountain-that-swims".

 

    Lots of species means lots of spoken languages, and Bellis finds herself in a key position of a translator due to her working knowledge of some of the more arcane tongues.  She may not be fluent in all of these, but for now she’s the best resource the wandering pirates have got.

 

    The storyline is complex, which is typical for China Miéville novels.  The reasons for Bellis’s fleeing New Crobuzon remain obscure for a long time, as does her determination to eventually return there.  Other press-ganged passengers from the Terpsichoria have their own reasons for wanting to contact New Crobuzon officials and some pirate leaders have their own agendas for steering Armada to uncharted waters.  It was a fun challenge to figure out who was using whom, and what ulterior motives the various main characters had.  It takes a while for the action to kick in alongside the intrigue, but once it does, you are treated to several exciting, chapter-long battle scenes.

 

    There is some magic (called “thaumaturgy”) present in the tale, including some very useful charmed artifacts, but it doesn’t overwhelm the storyline.  I liked the concept of “probability mining”, and chuckled at the fact that book-hoarding was considered a serious crime in the Garwater sector of Armada.  Miéville's choice of words is a vocabulary-lover’s delight: my favorites are given below, but there were lots more.

 

    Everything builds to a suitably exciting ending, including several twists to keep you on the edge of your seat.  In the end, Armada and its inhabitants are saved from a dire fate.  Or did they chicken out and miss a chance to gain unprecedented power?  That remains for the surviving characters, as well as the reader, to ponder.  Only China Miéville knows the answer.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Gurned (v.) : made a grotesque face (British).

Others: Disphotic (adj.); Integument (n.), Adumbrating (v.); Fatuous (adj.), Raddled (v.); Delimited (v.), Pusillanimous (adj.); Tup (v.), Detumescent (adj.); Bathetic (adj.), Benthic (adj.); Kitted (v., British), Blebbed (adj.).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.5/5 based on 527 ratings.

    Goodreads: 4.17/5 based on 29,260 ratings and 1,817 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    In New Crobuzon, what was not regulated was illicit.  In Armada, things were different.  It was, after all, a pirate city.  What did not directly threaten the city did not concern its authorities.  Bellis’ message, like other secrets, did not have to strive to be covert, as it might back home to avoid the militia.  Instead, it sped through this wrangling city with ease and speed, leaving a little trail for those who knew how to look.  (loc. 6141)

 

    “They knew how to pick at the might-have-beens and pull out the best of them, use them to shape the world.  For every action, there’s an infinity of outcomes.  Countless trillions are possible, many milliards are likely, millions might be considered probable, several occur as possibilities to us as observers—and one comes true.

    “But the Ghosthead knew how to tap some of those that might have been.”  (loc. 6703)

 

Kindle Details…

    The Scar is presently priced at $11.99 at Amazon.  The other two books in the series go for $9.99 (Perdido Street Station) and $10.99 (The Iron Council).  China Miéville has another dozen or so full-length e-books for your Kindle, most of them fiction, ranging in price from $7.99 to $13.99.

 

Let’s help you come up with my plan.  (loc. 3646)

    It’s hard to find anything to quibble about in The Scar.  It took me a while to figure out what the main plotline was, but I suspect this was a deliberate on the part of Miéville, since it allows the reader to soak up the mesmerizing atmosphere of life on Armada.

 

    There’s a fair amount of cussing, with the f-bomb and variations of damn being the most popular choices, although the fabulous word "shat" also makes an appearance.  Cusswords involving deities are common too, with a majority of them invoking a local god called “Jabber”.  There are a couple rolls-in-the-hay by Bellis, one allusion to auto-eroticism, and repeated instances of "statuary-eroticism".  I'll let you muse on that last one.

 

    My final gripe is also the nit-pickiest: there are no maps, at least in the Kindle version of The Scar.  Given all the seafaring travel that Bellis and the pirates do, my brain was screaming for a chart showing this world.

 

    9½ Stars.  I’m of the opinion that, since the passing of Kurt Vonnegut some years back, the most skilled contemporary author is now China Miéville.  The Scar did nothing to change my viewpoint.  I have two more of his books sitting on my TBR shelf: Iron Council, which is the final book in this Bas-Lag trilogy, and October, a non-fiction historical account of the Russian revolution in October, 1917.  It’s a pleasant quandary to decide which of these I should read next.

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.

Tinker's War - Jamie Sedgwick

   2012; 345 pages.  Book 2 (out of three) of the Tinkerer’s Daughter series.   New Author? : No.  Genre : Steampunk Fantasy.  Overall Rating : 7½*/10.

    The Vangars.  They came, in their dragon ships of death.

    They saw.  The lands of the humans, the Elvish Tal’mar, and even the giant Kanters.  All of whom were squabbling amongst themselves.  All of whom failed to realize the danger came from without, not within.

    They conquered.  They focused on the palaces of the reigning kings and queens, dropping bombs of unimaginable size and deadliness, and killing the rulers of each empire.  Then they swept into all the major cities in their, in their dragon ships, protected by gyroplanes, capturing and enslaving most of the civilians before they had a chance to flee.

    Yet a few made it out and went into hiding in the mountains.  Including Breeze.  The half-breed.  The tinker’s daughter.  The pilot.  The healer.  But she’s just one fighter.  What can she do against the overwhelming Vangar invasion force?

What’s To Like...

    Tinker’s War is the second book in a series about a half-elf/half-human girl named Breeze growing up in a bleak, futuristic world that reminds me of China Miéville’s Railsea setting.  This is vintage Jamie Sedgwick - the action starts right away with the Vangars attacking everyone all at once, and doesn't let up until the very end.

    Yet there is more to Tinker’s War than just thrills and spills.  Our half-breed heroine has a pair of suitors vying for her hand – one human, the other elf.  Neither one will take “no” for an answer, and both are jealous of each other.  But be of good cheer, male readers.  While this thread runs throughout the book, the romance never gets in the way of the excitement and fighting.

    I’m also thinking Jamie Sedgwick must be a mechanical engineer in real life, because we get some keen insight (usually courtesy of Tinker) into various mechanisms – the steamwagons, the dragon ships, the gyroplanes with their spring engines, piston motors, spring-loaded revolvers, and the strangest of all, at least to our heroes, the electric light bulb.

    The genre style is much more steampunk than fantasy.  Outside of the elves, it seems the only other magic is the gift of healing.  There is a hint of trolls, though.  And dragons abound in other books set in this world.

    The story is told from a first-person POV, Breeze’s, of course.  There are 32 chapters for 327 pages, plus an 18-page preview of the next book in the series.  Overall, Tinker’s War is a quick and easy read, which was exactly what I was looking for.

    The ending is so-so.  Nothing is resolved, the Tal’mar still are in firm control of their newly-conquered territory.  But there’s a nice tie-in to the conjunctive series Aboard The Great Iron Horse, and the Vangars are a dominant force in that setting.  So their sustained success here is consistent with the overall storyline.

Excerpts...

    “This is no life you have, Breeze.  You’re not living, you’re hiding.”

    I pulled my hands away from him and placed them on my lap.  “I’m doing exactly what I want to do, Robie.  Look at me.  Look at my face, my ears.  Do you think I’m one of your farm girls?  Do you envision me standing at a cook stove all day, my belly swollen with child, our house full of chaos and noise?  Is that what you want?”

    A mystified look swept across his face.  “Cook stove?  I don’t know… you do cook, don’t you?”  (loc. 87)

    I had long since learned that few people possess the kind of fortitude it takes to question their leaders.  Humans and Tal’mar are no different when it comes to this.  The individual is always more worried about calculating his or her personal outcome in a situation than making that situation a success.  Regrettably, I had come to learn that many people would choose to loose (sic) the war if it meant they could be the head slave, rather than win the war and be equal with everyone else.  (loc. 2454)

Kindle Details...

    Tinker’s War is priced at $0.99 at Amazon.  The first book in the series, The Tinkerer’s Daughter is free, and the final book, Blood And Steam, sells for $2.99.  Jamie Sedgwick has a slew of others e-books and series available at Amazon, ranging in price from free to $3.99.  Those are great prices for books of this caliber.

 “The hair in my nose keeps growing back no matter how much I trim it, but lose an arm or leg, or even a finger, and it’s gone forever.”  (loc. 290)

    There are a couple quibbles, none all that serious.

    First, there is little or no backstory, and it’s been two years since I read the first book in this series.  This isn’t all that critical, though, because of the episodic nature of the book.  More on this in a bit.

    Second, while getting into occupied cities is understandably a cinch, I found it curious how easily our plucky heroes could get out of them as well, even when there were a bunch of noisy humans in the group.  It was also odd that the Tal’mar Queen’s name is never mentioned.  I couldn’t recall it.  Maybe Jamie couldn’t either.

    Finally, given that the dragon ships make use of giant balloons containing flammable gas to keep them aloft, the good guys take an incredibly long time to wonder if that might be a weak spot in those airships’ defenses.  

     7½ Stars.  I’m beginning to gain a better insight into Jamie Sedgwick’s intent when writing a story, and more importantly, when he’s writing a series.  It doesn't seem like he's too concerned about furthering the overall plotline in the series.  Here, the main thread is the Vangars kicking butt all over the place, and the author doesn’t appear to feel any obligation to resolve that anytime soon.

    Instead, this book, and others written by him, have a feel of simply being “episodes” in his excellently-constructed post-apocalyptic world.  It’s kinda like watching any of the TV series of, say, Star Trek.  You know you’re in for a fascinating hour-long story.  But if you ask yourself how it furthers the five-year mission to boldly seek out and explore new worlds, well, frankly, it doesn’t.

    If Gene Roddenberry can get away with this, I suppose Jamie Sedgwick should be allowed to as well.