Category: Steampunk Book of the Day

Steamduck Learns to FLY! by Emilie P. Bush

I hope most of you have seen Her Majesty’s Explorer: a Steampunk bedtime story, Emilie P. Bush’s and William Kevin Petty’s first foray into the untamed wilderness that is Steampunk children’s books. That tale follows St. John Murphy Alexander, a mechanical explorer, but also introduced a much smaller mechanical creature: Steamduck.

Today (October 10, 2012) is the release day for Steamduck Learns to FLY!, the followup. In the sequel, we get to see how Steamduck starts his next adventure: flight. It all begins when he encounters a goose who asks him why he isn’t flying. When Steamduck explains that he can’t, the goose replies:

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Ganymede by Cherie Priest

Two years ago, Cherie Priest’s Boneshaker brought a new vitality to steampunk and kicked off her Clockwork Century series. Ganymede, the latest installment, come out today and is definitely worth adding to your library. (Whether it is third or fourth depends on whether you choose to count Clementine; I count it, but not everyone does.) I found it a more enjoyable read than Dreadnought which seemed to bog down at times, although still not as gripping as Boneshaker (which to be fair benefited from the excitement of introducing us to a new world).

This book follows two characters in more or less alternating chapters. First is Andan Cly, the Seattle airship captain we met back in Boneshaker who is making his first supply run as a legitimate business man, more or less, but who also needs to stop by New Orleans to do a favor for our second viewpoint character, Miss Josephine Early. Josephine runs a brothel in Texian-occupied New Orleans, but is also working with her brother and other guerrillas to help the Union’s efforts to end the 20 year civil war still ravaging North America. Andan doesn’t know is that the favor is piloting a secret stolen Confederate submarine, the titular Ganymede, or that the Confederate forces will stop at nothing to prevent that from happening. I won’t spoil anything here, but as with the earlier books in the series, the tensions build strongly to a powerful finish.

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The Girl in the Steel Corset by Kady Cross (with ARC Giveaway)

Kady Cross may be a new name, but she has already cut her chops quite successfully writing historical and paranormal romance as Kathryn Smith. The Girl in the Steel Corset is her teen romance book, but it is also a steampunk adventure story. If you want museum-robbing automata, cowboys in Victorian London, half-machine people, and an evil plot, Kady Cross will keep you turning the pages.

Official description:

In 1897 England, sixteen-year-old Finley Jayne has no one…except the “thing” inside her.

When a young lord tries to take advantage of Finley, she fights back. And wins. But no normal Victorian girl has a darker side that makes her capable of knocking out a full-grown man with one punch….
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Not Less Than Gods by Kage Baker

Today’s book is the ninth book in a series that is not a steampunk series, yet I think it qualifies for inclusion here. The trick is that the series is about time travel and in this one the travel is to a steampunk Victorian England. The result is a lighthearted steampunk James Bond-style adventure using what Publisher’s Weekly called “Charles-Babbage-meets-Maxwell-Smart technologia”. Whether the much-loved late Kage Baker would have explored the steampunk world more, we will never know, but at least we have this.

Official description:

Recently returned from war, young Edward Anton Bell-Fairfax is grateful to be taken under the wing of the Gentleman’s Speculative Society. At the Society, Edward soon learns that a secret world flourishes beneath the surface of London’s society, a world of wondrous and terrible inventions and devices used to tip the balance of power in a long-running game of high-stakes intrigue. Through his intensive training Edward Anton Bell-Fairfax, unwanted and lonely boy, becomes Edward Anton Bell-Fairfax, Victorian super-assassin, fleeing across the Turkish countryside in steam-powered coaches and honing his fighting skills against clockwork opponents.

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The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry

Perhaps the biggest mystery in The Manual of Detection is what kind of book is it. Is it steampunk? Michael Moorcock certainly thinks so in his review for the Guardian (see below). Other reviews treat it as a noir detective story, a surrealist art piece, or fantasy. The New Yorker called it an allegory. Yet others compare it to Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. Some see it as ironic, while other never mention that aspect of it. At the end of the day, it is was the reader decides it to be. Certainly, the reviews suggest it is well worth a read regardless of category and it has been added to my to-read list.

Official description:

Reminiscent of imaginative fiction from Jorge Luis Borges to Jasper Fforde yet dazzlingly original, The Manual of Detection marks the debut of a prodigious young talent. Charles Unwin toils as a clerk at a huge, imperious detective agency located in an unnamed city always slick with rain. When Travis Sivart, the agency’s most illustrious detective, is murdered, Unwin is suddenly promoted and must embark on an utterly bizarre quest for the missing investigator that leads him into the darkest corners of his soaking, somnolent city. What ensues is a noir fantasy of exquisite craftsmanship, as taut as it is mind- blowing, that draws readers into a dream world that will change what they think about how they think.

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