Manners & Mutiny is the fourth and final installment of The Finishing School series. The school in question is Madame Geraldine’s Finishing Academy for Yong Ladies of Quality, a flying dirigible where the young lady students study manners and spycraft. The heroine is Sophronia Temminick who, along with her friends Agatha and Dimity, must save the school, London, and probably England from the evil pickle-themed villains, the Picklemen. Much of the action concentrates on discovering and thwarting the Picklemen. There is much less classroom time […]
Tesla Lives in an Age of Witches and Ghosts
After a series of natural and manmade disasters, the steam-punk city of New Pittsburgh is under the control of a shadow government, and supernatural beings inhabit the darkness. This setting provides the backdrop for most of the story, although the action starts in London. Jake Desmet, his cousin Veronique (Nicki) LeClerque, and his best pal Rick Brand are completing a retrieval mission that does not go as smoothly as they would have liked. Jake and Rick’s fathers run an import business that extends to helping […]
A Steampunk Necromancer Solves a Murder
Jonathan L Howard’s second novel featuring the necromancer Johannes Cabal is set in a steampunk world. One of the things I really like about this series is that each novel is set and told in a different style, like Ray Bradbury (novel 1-Johannes Cabal the Necromancer) and HP Lovecraft (novel 3-The Fear Institute). The novel opens with Cabal unsuccessfully trying to steal a rare book containing secrets of necromancy. He manages to escape by infuriating and dueling his interrogator, then steals the identity of a […]
The Victorian Art of Blowing Stuff Up with Braun and Books
I seem to have been on a real fantasy/steampunk kick lately. Phoenix Rising is by far the most steampunky thing I’ve read lately. The story centers on two agents of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences, Eliza D. Braun and Wellington Books. Eliza is enamored of dynamite, guns, and action, while her new partner is a by-the-book Archivist. Their last names are not coincidental. The two are forced to work together, and quickly discover a mystery in the Archives’ unsolved case files that has connections to […]
Dancing with Werewolves, or at least a Werewolf
I have to admit that I’m actually kind of glad that I read the sequel first. It made this series a lot more fun (and it’s a lot of fun already) for all the “oh, now I get it” moments. The opening of the first volume of the Parasol Protectorate presents vague Cinderella elements in the heroine (although her likely prince charming is both werewolf and not very charming-or is he…). Alexia was never allowed to participate in society in order to give her younger […]