Cover Unveiled for Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells Edited by Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling

Art by Allen Williams

The all-original anthology Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells by the super editing duo of Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling is coming early next year. The theme is Gaslamp Fantasy, which falls along the lines of Steampunk only with more of a focus on magic instead of tech. The line-up looks quite impressive as does the cover. Love the white-glow-y hair.

“The Fairy Enterprise” by Jeffrey Ford

“From the Catalogue of the Pavilion of the Uncanny and Marvelous, Scheduled for Premiere at the Great Exhibition (Before the Fire)” by Genevieve Valentine

“The Memory Book” by Maureen McHugh

“Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells” by Delia Sherman

“La Reine D’Enfer” by Kathe Koja

“Briar Rose” by Elizabeth Wein

“The Governess” by Elizabeth Bear

“Smithfield” by James P. Blaylock

“The Unwanted Women of Surrey” by Kaaron Warren

“Charged” by Leanna Renee Hieber

“Mr. Splitfoot” by Dale Bailey

“Phosphorus” by Veronica Schanoes

“We Without Us Were Shadows” by Catherynne M. Valente

“The Vital Importance of the Superficial” by Ellen Kushner and Caroline Stevermer

“The Jewel in the Toad Queen’s Crown” by Jane Yolen

“A Few Twigs He Left Behind” by Gregory Maguire

“Their Monstrous Minds” by Tanith Lee

“Estella Saves the Village” by Theodora Goss

Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells will be released in March from Tor simultaneously in both hardcover and trade paperback. Another noteworthy anthology coming this October from Datlow and Windling is After comprised of all-original dystopian/apocalyptic stories.

Also here is the art unadulterated.

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REVIEW | Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway

Nick Harkaway burst on to the scene with The Gone Away World, in 2008 with what many considered one of the best debuts of year. We had to wait 4 years for his next book Angelmaker. People cry afoul when authors don't get a book out a year or even every two years, but many times those are the books worth remembering for the long term, which is the case here. Meet sensible Joseph Spork, careful Joseph. Then young and adventurous Joe. And finally crazy Joe along the way.

Angelmaker is part Spy novel, part family legacy, part end of the world, and just plain crazy. Well plain may not be right, but you get the idea. This is a melding that in most writers hands would fall apart, but Harkaway has the indelible skills to bring them together in a most satisfying way. Each and every character from the top down to those who only get a few pages are brought to life, right down to the little dog too.

"The dog's name is Bastion, and it is without shame or mercy. Any dog worth the name will sniff your crotch on arrival, but Bastion has buried his carbuncled nose in the angle of Joe's trousers and shows no inclination to retreat. Joe shifts slight, and the dog rewards him with a warning mutter, deep in the chest: I have my mouth in close proximity to your genitals, oh thou man who talks to my mistress over coffee. Do not irk or trifle with me! I possess but one tooth, oh, yes, for the rest were buried long ago in the flesh of sinners."

This could be considered Steampunk to a certain degree for those who don't think they like Steampunk. Yet it isn't exactly Steampunk, but it does take the most beautiful elements of the genre and incorporates them in a gorgeous fashion at the heart of a Spy/Adventure story.  The story flips between present in London following around Joe Spork, who fixes clockwork devices while lamenting his family's lurid past along with the adventures Edie, a female secret agent more than fifty years before in her glory days. And when the two stories collide things just start exploding.

There are many flashbacks, which at first seem a bit much, but you just have to go with. They almost always payoff. The language is quite endearing even when it goes off the rails a bit. Harkaway isn't one adverse to a bit of slapstick as evidenced by character names such as Rodney Titwhistle. But there is a lot of beauty is the story. Especially, the artisan devices that proliferate this world and the characters love for each other shines through amid all the hi-jinks and capering. This is very much a kitchen sink book with every back story told and every mystery explained even when you don't think there will be time.

If Opium Khans, horny secretaries, crazy cultists, mechanical doomsday devices, and shady underworld dealings sound at all intriguing then Angelmaker is a can't miss story. Just don't expect to be entirely sane at the end. The characters certainly aren't.  Angelmaker is definitely one to savor and not push through. As of right now it's my favorite new book this year and it will take a doozy of a story to knock it off that perch. I give Angelmaker 5 out of 5 hats. Despite some sluggishness at the start it turned out to be a rip-roaring adventure I'd have love to be stuck in the middle of.

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INTERVIEW | Nick Harkaway author of Angelmaker

INTERVIEW | Nick Harkaway author of Angelmaker

Nick Harkaway is a former screenwriter and the author of the very well lauded The Gone Away World. His second novel Angelmaker., was just released, which combines Spy Thrillers, mechanical wonders, and a gonzo sensibility. Harkaway is also a blogger for Futurebook.


MH: Thanks for joining us. Now your latest book Angelmaker seems to be a departure from The Gone Away World in terms of scope yet it still carries on with some themes such as coming of age and war, but is a much more focused story. What is your bar room description of Angelmaker?

HARKAWAY: Oh, wow - my writing is hell on précis... that was part of the point for me when I stopped doing movie script - I didn't have to do back-of-an-envelope pitches... Well, okay: guy switches on doomsday machine, has to break all the rules to save the world. But if there's table service I might get away with a few more lines about how it's about gangsters and spies and elephants, and patrimony and love and self-creation... But in the first place it's an adventure. I want people to have fun.

MH: Angelmaker is many different things. It is a spy thriller, a secret history of the world, and a story of multiple legacies. But what it most reminded me of were old school pulp adventures. What were you reading that led to Angelmaker?

HARKAWAY: Well, I do love the old pulp stories - and some of them are way better than people give them credit for. There's a massive discipline of plotting required if you're going to write at the speed those guys did and turn in a coherent story. And don't forget that Dickens and Conan Doyle both wrote episodically, too - their novels were written for magazines. But what was I reading... it's four years ago at least for me, so it's hard to remember. Rex Stout, I think. Robert Anton Wilson was in my mind, and DeLilo and Chabon, for sure. But it's a cinematic heritage, too - Little Caesar, Maltese Falcon, The Third Man... And obviously some of it is more James Bond. The Bond novies are great because - at least in the good ones - they understand the most important aspect of an adventure: the villain. A good villain makes the hero glorious. An insipid one makes him look weak - because how can it take so long to beat this dummy?

MH: One of the most beautiful aspects of Angelmaker were your descriptions of the devices created by the mechanical artisan group the Rushkinites. Where did your fascination with old mechanical objects begin? Was there one device that fascinated you as a child? Or was your own grandfather perhaps a tinkerer of some sort?

HARKAWAY: My mother's father had a clockwork music thing - there's a technical term but right now I've completely forgotten what it is - which is amazing. Metal punched discs played on a kind of grown-up music box, producing and absolutely beautiful tone. It's a magical object. But I've always loved strange and baroque objects. They have a humour and a joy about them. I fell in love with Jean Tanguely's machines and Rowland Emett's, with Heath Robinson and Rube Goldberg. The Ruskinite notion is near to my heart as well: artisan objects, with a personal narrative, affirm humanity in a way machine made products do not. But I have no idea where it all starts - it's been with me as long as I can remember - like telling stories.

MH: Angelmaker does have a Steampunk appeal to it to a degree stemming from the stylized mechanics, but I wouldn't call it Steampunk. I heard one person refer to it as Beepunk. How do you feel about labels in fiction?

HARKAWAY: I think they're almost always going to be inadequate with interesting writing. They're a shelving convention from the days when bookshops were isolated and catalogues weren't online, yet they continue to govern how we talk about stories. There are noble exceptions, books which plot the dead centre of a given label and become iconic as examples of it, but most labels are shorthands within which there are huge and exciting differences. You can't really say that The Difference Engine and The Diamond Age are the same kind of book. Sure, they have some similar architecture, but they take place at far distant ends of the timeline and have completely different feels. In the same way, Goldeneye and Brighton Rock are both spy movies, but liking one really does not guarantee liking another. Or even understanding it.

Which is not to say I don't love BeePunk, or LitPop, or whatever else, as concepts. But seriously, even there you get drift. Why 'punk'? I mean, obviously to make the connection to steampunk, but actually the punk part is missing from the book. Body modding and youth counterculture - which you see in cyberpunk and to a limited extent in some steampunk - are just gone. Angelmaker is a thriller, but it's not a bad boy with a ripped jacket. It's more like Bruce Wayne: garrulous and tipsy and pretending to be kind of a jackass, but it knows Kung Fu.

MH: The US cover for Angelmaker has some sort of puzzle worked in. Was this of your own devising or was the designer Jason Booher the culprit? The cover is quite amazing to behold. Online certainly doesn't do the print version justice.

HARKAWAY: This was Jason's idea. I contributed, but he made it happen. It was weirdly like editorial, only backwards: my publisher had this crazy dream and I complained and advised until it was ready to go... I suppose the US edition, technically, is slightly longer than the UK one... Yeah, I love the design!

MH: You seem to have a bit of fun in naming characters. Billy Friend and Rodney Titwhistle for example. Are names something you struggle with or do they pop into being quickly?

HARKAWAY: Usually they just show up along with the character. Occasionally they have to change, either because I was wrong about who that person is, or because they're out of whack with the tone. I tend to let names be a statement of some sort, which of course in real life they're not. And I try not to look back. Calling Billy "Friend" is an insane thing to do. Because that is his role. He's the friend. I could have called him McGuffin, too, because he's the guy who issues the Hero's Call, albeit sort of without meaning to. So then I thought about changing that, but it worked. It worked for me on the don't mess level of writing, the bit which runs the show and for which writers are pretty much passengers. So I ended up hanging a lantern on it, making jokes about how "he's a friend" is a gag they've done over the years. The Coen brothers say you have to write yourself into a corner so that you can write yourself out again, because that's when you do your best stuff. Names can be corners. Or they can just work.

MH: Just like how Rodney Titwhistle is a bit of tit. Your characters are incredibly rich, and it's usually the small details that make them seem less creations and more translations. How much do you draw from people you know or have met when you're developing characters, and how much is fabricated?

HARKAWAY: It's almost all fabricated. The shape of the story dictates the kind of person needed, and then the characters and their nature strengthens my grip on the world and what goes on. (Rodney, incidentally, got his funny name in part because he's very, very not funny, and I suppose to some extent because it sounds like one of those regretable English names which kick around until someone can't stand it any more and just changes it to something else.)

MH: In the same vein your fiction has such a fractured style and many seemingly loose ends that come into play late in the game. Do you ever lose yourself in the story structure? Also, one thing you're style has been known for are digressions. What do you see as the purpose of digression in a story?

HARKAWAY: Almost all my digressions fill a function, and usually it's to give you information you need without appearing to do so. Exposition is boring, and it can flag what's happening. But if you bury a piece of information in a flood of random detail - and somehow manage to make it stand out just enough - people get to your surprises and go " Oh, of course!" rather than "What the hell?" I don't generally get lost because I know why I'm there - my problem is not holding onto whatever secret it is I'm passing to you, it's burying it deep enough that you don't know you know it.

MH: I wanted to turn a bit of attention on to The Gone Away World while I have you. The narrative in The Gone Away World is essentially circular, mimicking the world-encircling pipe. Is structure a conscious decision when you're writing or do you let it develop naturally?

HARKAWAY: I wasn't deliberately mimicking the pipe, or the snake which eats its own tail  I was basically using the classic bookend style. TGAW is a hero story, a straightforward hero's journey dressed up in complexity. Take out the backstory and it's remarkably linear - you just have to know a bunch of things all the characters would already know in order to understand what's going on, so I have to show you those things and yet not let you know you're being told the answers. Hence, indeed, all the digressions.

MH: Who would win in a street fight: Ike Thermite or Bruce Lee?

HARKAWAY: It's like that sequence in Seven Samurai: neither of them would have any interest in a fight. They might well get drunk, though.

MH: Scotch or beer?

HARKAWAY: Scotch in its time and place, but beer with my club sandwich.

MH: You've been surrounded by writerly-types your whole life. What's the best piece of advice you've received?

HARKAWAY: When you're a pro, you work. You work when you're sick or hung over, when you want to sleep in. You keep going when you're heartbroken or scared, when everyone else goes to the pub. You don't give yourself a free pass. And sooner or later, you finish. And go back to the start. It's a stamina game.

MH: Okay, you've pretty much destroyed the world with The Gone Away World and almost destroyed the existence with Angelmaker. What's next? I've heard rumblings of your first non-fiction book.

HARKAWAY: Yeah, I've written a book about digitisation and the individual - The Blind Giant. It comes out in May... Wow, non-fiction is hard! What I hope is that there's enough interesting stuff to make up for whatever mistakes there are. It's about concepts, though I've tried to tie it to real world examples and studies.

But I've also done a draft of a third novel, which I'm itching to get back to. Novels are my thing.

MH: Now on to the important issues. What is your favorite hat?

HARKAWAY: I wear a Swaine Adeney & Brigg "Poet". It is genuinely the best hat I have ever owned, the Indiana Jones heritage being a bonus.

MH: Very swank. What books are you reading at the moment?

HARKAWAY: Planet Ponzi, The Teleportation Accident, and The English Monster. I also have Isaac Marion's new collection waiting for me.

MH: Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Is there anything you'd like to say to close us out?

HARKAWAY: Just that for me it's about telling stories and enjoying them. As long as you're having as much fun as I am, I'm good. Oh, and come and say hello on Twitter - @Harkaway. And thanks for having me :)

*******

Special thanks go out to Adam Callaway for helping out with questions. Watch out for him. He's going to be huge one day.

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You had me at smoking monkey holding a bigass gun

The art is by Jake Murray

Come and look me in the eye and tell me this isn't a cool cover. I dare you. Ack-Ack Macaque has to be one of the oddest titles to come from genre publishers this year. To date Gareth L. Powell has published one novel with The Recollection and also the novella Silversands.  Both are far-future Sci-Fi that most would put in the Space Opera camp. So Ack-Ack Macaque is definitely a step in a new direction for him, but the story does have its roots in one of his short stories of the same name published in 2007. With a cover like this it would be criminal of me not to read it. It has got a smoking money on it for book's sake! Here's the blurb:

“In 1944, as waves of German ninjas parachute into Kent, Britain’s best hopes for victory lie with a Spitfire pilot codenamed ‘Ack-Ack Macaque’. The trouble is, Ack-Ack Macaque is a cynical, one-eyed, cigar-chomping monkey, and he’s starting to doubt everything, including his own existence.

A century later, in a world where France and Great Britain merged in the late 1950s and nuclear-powered Zeppelins encircle the globe, ex-journalist Victoria Valois finds herself drawn into a deadly game of cat and mouse with the man who butchered her husband and stole her electronic soul. Meanwhile, in Paris, after taking part in an illegal break-in at a research laboratory, the heir to the British throne goes on the run.

And all the while, the doomsday clock ticks towards Armageddon.”

Ack-Ack Macaque is scheduled to release in late December from Solaris Books.

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Cover Unveiled for Cherie Priest's The Inexplicables

It has been no secret that I'm a fan of Cherie Priest's Clockwork Century series. She always manages the right mix of action and her own crazy version of history along with characters that enrapt me. The Inexplicables will be the 4th in the series that will bring us back to Seattle, which should mean some fan favorites will be making appearances . The cover above may not be final, but I sure hope it is as it is begging me to turn the page to see what the ginger on the cover is staring at. Although this would be the first to not show a female lead character on the cover or a big crazy device in the background. The art is by Cliff Nielsen instead of by Jon Foster who has done the rest of the series to date. Here is the official blurb:

Rector “Wreck ‘em” Sherman was orphaned as a toddler in the Blight of 1863, but that was years ago. Wreck has grown up, and on his eighteenth birthday, he’ll be cast out out of the orphanage.

And Wreck’s problems aren’t merely about finding a home. He’s been quietly breaking the cardinal rule of any good drug dealer and dipping into his own supply of the sap he sells. He’s also pretty sure he’s being haunted by the ghost of a kid he used to know—Zeke Wilkes, who almost certainly died six months ago. Zeke would have every reason to pester Wreck, since Wreck got him inside the walled city of Seattle in the first place, and that was probably what killed him.Maybe it’s only a guilty conscience, but Wreck can’t take it anymore, so he sneaks over the wall.

The walled-off wasteland of Seattle is every bit as bad as he’d heard, chock-full of the hungry undead and utterly choked by the poisonous, inescapable yellow gas. And then there's the monster. Rector's pretty certain that whatever attacked him was not at all human—and not a rotter, either. Arms far too long. Posture all strange. Eyes all wild and faintly glowing gold and known to the locals as simply "The Inexplicables."

In the process of tracking down these creatures, Rector comes across another incursion through the wall -- just as bizarre but entirely attributable to human greed. It seems some outsiders have decided there's gold to be found in the city and they're willing to do whatever it takes to get a piece of the pie unless Rector and his posse have anything to do with it.

The Inexplicables will be released November 13th. There is at least one more title planned in the series called Fiddlehead that will most likely be out late in 2013.

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NEWS | New Carlos Ruiz Zafon and More Gail Carriger Steampunk Goodness

Thanks to Dark Wolf for the news of a new Carlos Ruiz Zafon novel being released this fall in Spanish, which is part of the world he started with The Shadow of the Wind, one of my all-time favorite books. The new book is titled El Prisionero del Cielo, which translates to The Prisoner of Heaven. The Prisoner of Heaven again plays with the time period a bit and takes place during the 40's and 50's. Although the novel will be released in Spain in November nothing is firm on a US release. Judging by the release schedule for Zafon's last effort, The Angel's Game, we may see the US Spanish edition a couple months after the release in Spain and the English translation 4 to 6 months after that. So hopefully by Summer 2012 we'll all be lost in the Cemetery of Forgotten Books once again and back in the Gothic Barcelona that has no end of intrigue and romance.

Gail Carriger is also keeping her writing schedule quite full.  Even though February 2012 will mark the fifth and final Alexia Tarrabotti novel with Timeless, it won't be the end of the Alternative past she created. A while back I learned Carriger would be venturing into the YA field with a Steampunk series tentatively titled The Finishing School. The first book will be titled Etiquette and Espionage is placed about 20 years before the events of Soulless and should be out in Fall 2012. But there is even more afoot. Here is a bit from Orbit's official announcement:

Orbit US will publish Gail Carriger’s next adult series, The Parasol Protectorate Abroad. The series is tentatively scheduled to launch in 2013 with book one, Prudence, to be followed by Imprudence (naturally).

So it looks like we have plenty of Carriger to look forward to over the next few years. And don't forget the manga adaptation of Soulless is on track for a March 2012 release.

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GUEST POST | Lev AC Rosen on Shakespeare and All Men of Genius

It’s funny. I didn’t expect everyone to focus on the Shakespeare thing so much. To understand why I used Twelfth Night as inspiration, I should probably give you a bit of backstory as to when I started the book and what I was thinking then.

I was in my final year of graduate school, working on my thesis – my second novel, similar to my first, a moody, literary work with multiple points of view in a New York City that I wouldn’t call paranormal (no vampires, no fey) but which I’d call magical. Literary magical realism. That’s what I was working on. When asked what the book was about I’d say ‘three people dealing with losses of various kinds, and the way the subway system and these strange people who come into their lives help them.’ I don’t need to go into more detail – I like the book, and I still hope to sell it one day, but it was very similar to my first, which my agent had sent out to many editors, with similar replies: we love this book and the characters, but just don’t see it making any money.

Fair enough. But I was growing tired of it. I knew I was a good writer, but at this point I also knew what my weakness was – plot. Characters I could do, language, mood, structure… but when asked to say what my books were about, it would always be something thematic, metaphoric. The books I wrote are good (I think, in a totally unbiased way) but they weren’t big on story, in the classic sense of the word.

And I wanted to do something steampunk. I’d been in love with the genre and the aesthetic since I took a class called Victorians and the Machine, my junior year of college. But really, having been raised on Star Trek: TNG and Victorian literature (Wilkie Collins, especially), and still insisting that Final Fantasy VI (or 3, whatever you want to call it) is one of the best video games ever, I suspect I’d loved the genre even before that, I just didn’t have a name for it.

First, I went to the Wilde. I have studied Wilde extensively, have many biographies, two collections of his complete works. I wanted to use Wilde somehow, to be inspired by that Victorian humor and wit. So I went to his best known work: The Importance of Being Earnest. The problem with Earnest, or at least the problem I faced, was that it’s too silly to actually be a good plot skeleton. It’s about many things: dual identities, lies, love, symbolism, the superficial, etc, but when you look at the story, it’s most about two pairs of star-crossed lovers and the mystery of “where did that boy in the handbag come from.” Which is amazing for a play, but not much to use as the basis for a novel. And I knew I needed something else. Plus, isn’t that what steampunk is about? Assembling different pieces from different places into a new whole?

It all started as emails to myself. I would write emails back and forth, arguing with myself like a crazy person. I didn’t want to write anything down yet – that felt like it was taking time away from my thesis, which I Really Needed To Be Working On. So I emailed ideas back and forth. I had pretty much decided it was okay to steal someone else’s plot when I decided to use Wilde. But whose? Another Victorian? Collins would be too convoluted for me to use, there was no way to copy all the complexities. Hardy was too much about manners – I couldn’t see a way to bring in mad science. Using Wells or Verne would be too literal and unimaginative. And then one night, as I sat there literally emailing sentences to myself one at a time, my thesis open on the computer, but forgotten, it hit me: Shakespeare. Shakespeare, my post-modernism-voice told me, had all the plots. After all, there were only so many actual plots out there. Shakespeare might not have created them all, but he codified them into archetypes people still identify. Why not borrow from the best?

I’d studied Shakespeare. I had a theatre minor. But I wasn’t – and I still don’t think I am – an expert. But I knew enough to start thinking. I wanted a comedy. So much of the steampunk literature I had read was serious, even gloomy. I wanted something that echoed Wilde, as I said – Victorian wit (I’ll let you be the judge as to my success in that venture). So I went to the comedies. My favorite of the comedies, and I know people will groan, but my favorite is Midsummer. I love it. I love that the interchangeable lovers, are in fact, interchanged: I love that the play seems to both mock and celebrate love, I love the fairies and the mechanicals. But it wasn’t going to work. It had too much of the same problem as Earnest. Oh sure, I could write some wacky brain-switching love story, but it didn’t have any danger in it. And also… I was too close to it. I knew that. I’d want to preserve everything (I’m using it for the third book in the series right now, in fact, and facing all these problems), make sure every amazing line was used… I decided fairly quickly not to use Midsummer.

But my second favorite of the comedies? That would work. Twelfth Night had so much in place already – the drag aspect would easily translate to Victorian times, and I knew about the state of education in Victorian times, and how they were generally starting to let women into colleges… but what if there was one that didn’t? The one that my protagonist (Violet, obviously, couldn’t use Viola, too archaic, but a little tweaking and Viola and Sebastian became Violet and Ashton) most wanted to go to… a school for mad science. Then it all started falling into place: brilliant female scientist, male twin brother she could dress up as, school for mad scientists, a broody but handsome duke/headmaster. I brought Wilde back to make the Olivia/Cecily character the Duke’s ward, and used various names of attendants and butlers as other characters who had nothing to do with the source material. In fact, most of them don’t line up at all with the characters whose name they share, and trying to line them up and look for comparisons is a pointless venture (I’m not trying to impress theatre people, after all – just trying to write a good book). I like to think that while there are a few obvious correlations between characters in my book and those in the plays, all my characters are unique, but the tone and flavor of the book definitely comes from the source material.

That said, this was never intended to be a “mash-up” in the style of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. And I don’t think it is. I do use quotes from both the Shakespeare and the Wilde, but not very often, and usually in a way that I like to think is a fun twist. And because I was already using a genre as post-modern as steampunk, I found the idea of the polyvocalism in the text to blend right in. I threw in other little tributes to classical works of mad science, literary or cinematic, like Dr. Voukil, and one of Fiona’s hairstyles. Details large and small are derived from a multitude of sources beyond the Shakespeare and Wilde. And it all worked (for me anyway, you’ll need to buy and read the book to decide if it works for you. That was a hint). I had successfully blended everything, and kept my own voice distinct (again, I hope).

But the most interesting thing I discovered - and this was after the book was finished, and bought – was that I could suddenly do plot. Not expertly. But using Shakespeare as a crutch had helped me develop my plot-muscles. I started writing a noir, using no actual specific work as a skeleton, just my knowledge and love of film noir. And it’s working. It has a plot that I developed completely on my own. It’s sort of a strange feeling, knowing I somehow learned something, changed my way of thinking, without knowing how I did it, exactly, or when it changed. And hey, I finally sold a book.

Of course, there is the alternate theory about where my inspiration came from…

Nah. That would be silly.

********

LEV AC ROSEN was born and raised in New York. He attended Oberlin College and received his MFA in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence. His work has been featured in Esopus Magazine and on various blogs, including Tor.com. He currently lives in Manhattan. ALL MEN OF GENIUS is his first novel.


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REVIEW | Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti by Genevieve Valentine

In a post-apocalyptic landscape a circus wanders around the waste from small enclave of life to the next in a never ending journey to entrance audiences with their wonders and grotesqueries. They may only visit a town once in a lifetime, if you're lucky, so get in while you can. Just don't tag along unless you have a strong heart unless you don't have a problem with it being replaced with scrap metal.

Last year Paul Jessup wrote an article for this corner of the web. An article that served as almost a call to action on what he was hoping for out of Steampunk in the future. A Steampunk novel that wasn't just Victorian. That wasn't just all about cogs and steam. That wasn't about colonialism and white people. Well the answer to his mandate has been answered by Valentine with a very dark and melodic first novel that consists of an unforgettable story that stays with you long after you finish the last page. Mechanique will haunt your dreams.

Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti is a novel of disparities. Disparities of time, love, and of what life is and should be. Even of what life could be, but probably shouldn't be.

Life in any circus can be hard. Hard for all the traveling, setup, and performing. But the Tresaulti circus is an entirely different beast. Like none you've seen before.  It is filled with moody characters desiring what someone else has even if that something is another person or a part of a person. Somehow Valentine makes a group of mostly unlikable characters into a family. A family you end up caring quite a bit about. I was surprised how much I came to care for each and every one of them. Even those I loathed and couldn't entirely comprehend.

The pacing and style take quite a few chapters to get a handle on, but all the hard work pays off in this slim volume that is heavy with meaning. We flip back and forth through time seemingly at random that starts with the mention of the death of a character who we only relive through the memories of others.   Each chapter acts almost as a standalone short story as Valentine has gone with her strengths of less is more. Each and every word is important and has reverberations throughout the narrative as the characters search for what comes next.

The Steampunk aspects appear more magical than mechanical, but each and every touch is done thoughtfully and with verve. Sure there are people with mechanical arms and wings, but this story is so much more than Steampunk. Mechanique actually has more in common with New Weird given its horror influences. Fans of early Mieville and VanderMeer will fall in love.

Mechanique is best experienced for yourself rather than reading an analysis. All those that like challenging reads should give this a chance and even a few of you who don't. On it surface you can simply enjoy it for the circus motifs and post-apocalyptic side. For you Steampunk fans this is one of the most original novels you'll ever find around the genre. For those that go deeper you'll be richly rewarded. I give Mechanique 8.5 out of 10 hats. I can't wait to see what Valentine has in store for us next. She is a voice to watch.  Be sure to check out an earlier post I did on the related short story work available online for the Circus Tresaulti.


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Cover Unveiled for The Rift Walker (Vampire Empire) by Clay & Susan Griffith

In a word: beautiful.

 Last year I was pleasantly surprised by Clay and Susan Griffith's novel debut The Greyfriar. It was the perfect mix of pulpy goodness, Steampunk ascetics, and bloody vampires. I thought so highly of it I named it as the runner-up best vampire read of 2010 after the epic that was The Passage. So the sequel The Rift Walker is high on my comfort to-read list this year. Here is the synopsis, but skip ahead if you haven't read The Greyfriar:

Princess Adele struggles with a life of marriage and obligation as her Equatorian Empire and their American Republic allies stand on the brink of war against the vampire clans of the north. However, the alliance's horrific strategy for total victory drives Adele to abandon her duty and embark on a desperate quest to keep her nation from staining its hands with genocide. Reunited with her great love, the mysterious adventurer known to the world as the Greyfriar, Adele is pursued by her own people as well as her vengeful husband, senator Clark. With the human alliance in disarrray, Prince Cesare, lord of the British vampire clan, seizes the initiative and strikes at the very heart of Equatoria.

As Adele labors to bring order to her world, she learns more about the strange powers she exhibited in the north. Her teacher, Mamoru, leads a secret cabal of geomancers who believe Adele is the one who can touch the vast power of the Earth that surges through ley lines and wells up at the rifts where the lines meet. These energies are the key to defeating the enemy of mankind, and if Princess Adele could ever bring this power under her command, she could be death to vampires. But such a victory will also cost the life of Adele's beloved Greyfriar.

The artist for the series so far is none other than Chris McGrath, who I felt was looking a bit same-y with his cover art recently, but this piece reminded me again why I was first attracted to his work. He has an ability to capture a scene and execute it perfectly.

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FREE FICTION | A Ticket to Genevieve Valentine's Circus Tresaulti

Greetings ladies and gentlemen! Please steel yourself as you are in for quite a dark delicacy of a very strange and metallic kind.  For you have entered into the Circus Tresaulti! The one and only mechanical circus of wondrous and sometimes hideous proportions!

Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti is Genevieve Valentine's just released debut novel.  It is quite an original piece of fiction and once I found my footing in the world I carried away with the circus . I'm nearly done with it and although it is short I can't bring myself to finish it as this is a world unlike any others. The style challenges the reader like few do as it is at once both beautiful, mystifying, and horrifying.  I'll hold most of my thoughts until my final review, but if you couldn't tell I think quite highly of Valentine's work.  The closest comparison I can think of is Jeff VanderMeer's Ambergris books as Mechanique is a very fractured story jumping around in time and also perspective.

Valentine has been working on her dark Steampunk circus placed in a post-apocalyptic world for many years and it has its origins in the short story work. Below are three stories of the Tresaulti Circus, which will give you a very good idea of what to expect in the pages of Mechanique. Each piece adds a new facet to this world and at least one is placed during the events of Mechanique.

The recently released “Study, for Solo Piano” is available though Fantasy Magazine here or as an audio piece here.

"The Finest Spectacle Anywhere" can be read at Beneath Ceaseless Skies, which just went live today, I believe.

“Bread and Circuses”can be read online at Beneath Ceaseless Skies or as an audio version here.

More about Genevieve Valentine and here work can be found on her site and a special site setup just for the Circus Tresaulti.

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NEWS | Mike Mignola & Christopher Golden sell new series

Both Golden and Publisher's Marketplace have confirmed that Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden have sold a pair of novels in a new Steampunk series to St. Martin with the first Joe Golem and the Drowning City to be released early next year.  Much of Mignola's work does already have Steampunk overtones, especially some B.P.R.D. stuff and given this is a pushed forward setting  far past Victorian times this could certainly be a very original take on the genre. Here is the official word:

Mike Mignola & Christopher Golden's JOE GOLEM AND THE DROWNING CITY, a supernatural-steampunk illustrated novel following an orphaned teenage girl, an aging conjuror, a lunatic scientist, a Victorian occult detective, and the stalwart sidekick, Joe Golem, as they struggle for the fate of an alternate 1970s Lower Manhattan, which sank into the water during a catastrophe in 1925, leaving those unwilling or unable to abandon it to make a new life in streets turned to canals, to St. Martin's, in a two-book deal, for publication in early 2012 (World).

This marks Mignola and Golden's second novel collaboration after the illustrated novel Baltimore: Or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire from a couple years back.  They have also collaborated on a number of other project including some work related to  B.P.R.D. and the Hellboy short story anthologies which Golden edited.

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Covers Unveiled for Ganymede by Cherie Priest & All Men of Genius by Lev AC Rosen

Cherie Priest next Clockwork Century novel Ganymede finally has a cover. And it looks to be by Jon Foster who has done all the other books in the series so far. Strong heroines are still in effect. I'm going to guess the large device in the background in the sub-like Ganymede mentioned in the blurb.

The air pirate Andan Cly is going straight. Well, straighter. Although he’s happy to run alcohol and guns wherever the money’s good, he’s not sure the world needs more sap, or its increasingly ugly side effects. But reforming is easier said than done: the captain’s first legal gig will be paid for by sap money, because the Seattle Underground is in dire need of supplies.

New Orleans is not Cly’s first pick for a shopping run. He loved the Big Easy once, back when he likewise loved a beautiful mixed-race prostitute named Josephine Early, but that was a decade ago. He’s still on Jo’s mind, he learns when she sends him a telegram about a peculiar piloting job. It’s a chance to complete two lucrative jobs at once. He sends his old paramour a note and heads for New Orleans, with no idea of what he’s in for—or what she wants him to fly.

But he won’t be flying. Not exactly. Hidden at the bottom of Lake Pontchartrain lurks an astonishing war machine, an immense submersible called the Ganymede. This prototype could end the war, if only anyone had the faintest idea of how to operate it….if only they could sneak it past the Southern forces at the mouth of the Mississippi River….if only it hadn’t killed most of the men who’d ever set foot inside it.

Now the only question is whether Cly and his crew will end up in the history books, or at the bottom of the ocean.

The end of September is always a big time of year for Steampunk titles and Tor is releasing Lev AC Rosen's debut All Men of Genius the same day as Priest's latest.  All the gears to make it scream Steampunk, but I'm getting a big Kage Baker/Company vibe. This makes a bit of sense since it has a large historical bent based on its influences.

A steampunk retelling of Twelfth Night and The Importance of Being Earnest from an exciting young talent.

Inspired by two of the most beloved works by literary masters, All Men of Genius takes place in an alternate Steampunk Victorian London, where science makes the impossible possible.

Violet Adams wants to attend Illyria College, a widely renowned school for the most brilliant up-and-coming scientific minds, founded by the late Duke Illyria, the greatest scientist of the Victorian Age. The school is run by his son, Ernest, who has held to his father’s policy that the small, exclusive college remain male-only. Violet sees her opportunity when her father departs for America. She disguises herself as her twin brother, Ashton, and gains entry.

But keeping the secret of her sex won’t be easy, not with her friend Jack’s constant habit of pulling pranks, and especially not when the duke’s young ward, Cecily, starts to develop feelings for Violet’s alter ego, “Ashton.” Not to mention blackmail, mysterious killer automata, and the way Violet’s pulse quickens whenever the young duke, Ernest (who has a secret past of his own), speaks to her. She soon realizes that it’s not just keeping her secret until the end of the year faire she has to worry about: it’s surviving that long.

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LOOKING FORWARD | Urban Fantasy & Steampunk Books to Watch for in 2011

Cover Unveiled for The Clockwork Rocket by Greg Egan

The Clockwork Rocket is Greg Egan's first Steampunk related title, although he seems to be going with his strengths giving Steampunk a more hard Sci-Fi edge than we normally see. Hopefully Egan's Orthogonal series is better done than Alastair Reynolds' disappointing Terminal World. The synopsis certainly intrigues me greatly and the cover does give a good Space Opera feel.

In Yalda's universe, light has no universal speed and its creation generates energy.

On Yalda's world, plants make food by emitting their own light into the dark night sky.

As a child Yalda witnesses one of a series of strange meteors, the Hurtlers, that are entering the planetary system at an immense, unprecedented speed. It becomes apparent that her world is in imminent danger — and that the task of dealing with the Hurtlers will require knowledge and technology far beyond anything her civilisation has yet achieved.

Only one solution seems tenable: if a spacecraft can be sent on a journey at sufficiently high speed, its trip will last many generations for those on board, but it will return after just a few years have passed at home. The travelers will have a chance to discover the science their planet urgently needs, and bring it back in time to avert disaster.

Orthogonal is the story of Yalda and her descendants, trying to survive the perils of their long mission and carve out meaningful lives for themselves, while the threat of annihilation hangs over the world they left behind. It will comprise three volumes:
Book One: The Clockwork Rocket
Book Two: The Eternal Flame
Book Three: The Arrows of Time

The Clockwork Rocket will be released this July in the US by Night Shade and September in the UK Gollancz.  Egan even has a page setup to explain the physics behind this Universe that is a bit over my head at this early hour, but there is also this handy video.

The view from Yalda's Spaceship:


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20th Anniversary Edison Cover Unveiled for The Difference Engine

20th Anniversary Edition

The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling was the first well known Steampunk novel building on everything Jeter and Blaylock started, but with its own darker path. This year is the 20th anniversary of its publication and Spectra has given us the best cover yet. Doesn't that cover just take you aback? It is creepy and cool in all the right ways. The eye! Gah! The eye!

While The Difference Engine isn't my favorite cup of tea in the Steampunk area I do appreciate what it did for the genre and I'm glad it has gotten such a classy treatment. It almost makes me want to read it again. The new edition hits shelves late in July and features an introduction from Cory Doctorow.  Here are a few of the treatments The Difference Engine has received around the world, which shows how boring all the US editions thus far have been.

US HC

UK HC

UK paperback

French HC

Spanish

US Mass Market

UK Masterworks Edition

Which one catches your eye?

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LOOKING FORWARD | Urban Fantasy and Steampunk in 2011

And the reading list just keep getting longer and longer.  Now up are my Urban Fantasy and Steampunk picks for 2011. The Sci-Fi and Fantasy lists are up already for those interested. I've dropped quite a few of the Urban Fantasy series I was reading over the last year as they were getting a bit too same-y and not building to anything I was interested in. So I'm hoping this new crop has a few I can sink my teeth into.

Urban Fantasy

Bloodshot by Cherie Priest | January 25, Spectra

Sure vampire Urban Fantasies are plentiful, but Priest has the skills to make this start to a new series quite entertaining.  Plus the sequel Hellbent will be out in August for all of us that hate waiting.

Raylene Pendle (AKA Cheshire Red), a vampire and world-renowned thief, doesn’t usually hang with her own kind. She’s too busy stealing priceless art and rare jewels. But when the infuriatingly charming Ian Stott asks for help, Raylene finds him impossible to resist—even though Ian doesn’t want precious artifacts. He wants her to retrieve missing government files—documents that deal with the secret biological experiments that left Ian blind. What Raylene doesn’t bargain for is a case that takes her from the wilds of Minneapolis to the mean streets of Atlanta. And with a psychotic, power-hungry scientist on her trail, a kick-ass drag queen on her side, and Men in Black popping up at the most inconvenient moments, the case proves to be one hell of a ride.

****************

The World House by Guy Adams  | Jan 25, Angry Robot  |  DEBUT

I'm calling this a debut while in reality it is Adams' fifth or sixth book, but all the rest were established properties related to the TV shows Torchwood and Life on Mars. I just love this idea. Read on...

Combining the puzzle box of Hellraiser with the explorartion of Tad Williams' Otherland series, this is the perfect blend of fantasy and adventure, an exceptional modern fantasy debut.

THERE IS A BOX. INSIDE THAT BOX IS A DOOR. AND BEYOND THAT DOOR IS A WHOLE WORLD.

In some rooms, forests grow. In others, animals and objects come to life. Elsewhere, secrets and treasures wait for the brave and foolhardy.

And at the very top of the house, a prisoner sits behind a locked door waiting for a key to turn. The day that happens, the world will end...File under: Modern Fantasy [Worlds within Worlds | Prison Break | Exploring the Unknown | Dark Powers]

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Midnight Riot/Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch  |  Feb 1, Del Rey | DEBUT

This one has the title Rivers of London in the UK and Midnight Riot in the US.  Some are calling it British Dresden Files, but I always thought that was Mike Carey's Felix Castor?  But I digress as this is getting many rave reviews with the sequel Moon Over Soho coming out in March.

Probationary Constable Peter Grant dreams of being a detective in London’s Metropolitan Police. Too bad his superior plans to assign him to the Case Progression Unit, where the biggest threat he’ll face is a paper cut. But Peter’s prospects change in the aftermath of a puzzling murder, when he gains exclusive information from an eyewitness who happens to be a ghost. Peter’s ability to speak with the lingering dead brings him to the attention of Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale, who investigates crimes involving magic and other manifestations of the uncanny. Now, as a wave of brutal and bizarre murders engulfs the city, Peter is plunged into a world where gods and goddesses mingle with mortals and a long-dead evil is making a comeback on a rising tide of magic.

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Ghost Story by Jim Butcher  | July 26, Roc

A new Dresden Files is always an event and with the giant cliff-hanger from Changes we all need to know what will happen to Harry. WARNING: Do not read the blurb if you are not up-to-date on the series.

When we last left the mighty wizard detective Harry Dresden, he wasn't doing well. In fact, he had been murdered by an unknown assassin.

But being dead doesn't stop him when his friends are in danger. Except now he has nobody, and no magic to help him. And there are also several dark spirits roaming the Chicago shadows who owe Harry some payback of their own.

To save his friends-and his own soul-Harry will have to pull off the ultimate trick without any magic...

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After the Golden Age by Carrie Vaughn  |  April 12, Tor

I love superhero stuff done in prose form.  This time around the POV is from the mundane daughter to superheros parents. Definitely sounds like good times to me.

Can an accountant defeat a supervillain? Celia West, only daughter of the heroic leaders of the superpowered Olympiad, has spent the past few years estranged from her parents and their high-powered lifestyle. She’s had enough of masks and heroics, and wants only to live her own quiet life out from under the shadow of West Plaza and her rich and famous parents.

Then she is called into her boss’ office and told that as the city’s top forensic accountant, Celia is the best chance the prosecution has to catch notorious supervillain the Destructor for tax fraud. In the course of the trial, Celia’s troubled past comes to light and family secrets are revealed as the rift between Celia and her parents grows deeper. Cut off from friends and family, Celia must come to terms with the fact that she might just be Commerce City’s only hope

This all-new and moving story of love, family, and sacrifice is an homage to Golden Age comics that no fan will want to miss.

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Hounded: The Iron Druid Chronicles by Kevin Hearne | April 19, Del Rey | DEBUT

A new Urban Fantasy series with a quick succession planned for publishing--with book two Hexed out in May and book three Hammered in June--this could become a popular series quickly. I was always fascinated with the early Highlander books and this seems to be in that vein starring an immortal druid.

Atticus O’Sullivan has been running for two thousand years and he’s a bit tired of it. After he stole a magical sword from the Tuatha Dé Danann (those who became the Sidhe or the Fae) in a first century battle, some of them were furious and gave chase, and some were secretly amused that a Druid had the cheek to defy them. As the centuries passed and Atticus remained an annoyingly long-lived fugitive, those who were furious only grew more so, while others began to aid him in secret.

Now he’s living in Tempe, Arizona, the very last of the Druids, far from where the Fae can easily find him. It’s a place where many paranormals have decided to hide from the troubles of the Old World—from an Icelandic vampire holding a grudge against Thor to a coven of Polish witches who ran from the German Blitzkrieg.

Unfortunately, the very angry Celtic god who wants that sword has tracked him down, and Atticus will need all his power, plus the help of a seductive goddess of death, a sexy bartender possessed by a Hindu witch, and some good, old-fashioned luck of the Irish to kick some arse and deliver himself from evil.

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The Damned Busters by Matthew Hughes | June, Angy Robot

Book 1 in the Hell & Back series from the author of the Henghis Hapthorn series. It seems like this will be a lighter series than the Hapthorn books and the awesome cover pulled me in immediately. Some black humor perchance?

After accidentally summoning a demon, Chesney Anstruther refuses to sell his soul, which leads through various confusions to, well, Hell going on strike. Which means that nothing bad ever happens in the world… with disastrous consequences.

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No Hero by Jonathan Wood    | July 2011, Night Shade  |  DEBUT

Described as Jim Butcher meets James Rollins this could be a good action packed Cthulhu/Urban Fantasy.

"What would Kurt Russell do?"

Oxford police detective Arthur Wallace asks himself that question a lot. Because Arthur is no hero. He's a good cop, but prefers that action and heroics remain on the screen, safely performed by professionals.

But then, secretive government agency MI12 comes calling, hoping to recruit Arthur in their struggle against the tentacled horrors from another dimension known as the Progeny. But Arthur is NO HERO.

Can an everyman stand against sanity-ripping cosmic horrors?

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Low Town by Daniel Polansky | August 16, Doubleday | DEBUT

With Joe Pitt being done and the Nightside coming to a close it is time for a new place to visit and "Low Town" could just be it. This is being published under the title The Straight Razor Cure in the UK. I wonder if "Low Town" means something to the British causing the title change? This has been pitched as "an edgy noir/fantasy crossover pitched as Tarantino meets Tolkien." Let's see if that pans out. The cover certainly works well. Do you feel the gritty?

Drug dealers, hustlers, brothels, dirty politics, corrupt cops . . . and sorcery. Welcome to Low Town.

In the forgotten back alleys and flophouses that lie in the shadows of Rigus, the finest city of the Thirteen Lands, you will find Low Town. It is an ugly place, and its champion& is an ugly man. Disgraced intelligence agent. Forgotten war hero. Independent drug dealer. After a fall from grace five years ago, a man known as the Warden leads a life of crime, addicted to cheap violence and expensive drugs. Every day is a constant hustle to find new customers and protect his turf from low-life competition like Tancred the Harelip and Ling Chi, the enigmatic crime lord of the heathens.

The Warden’s life of drugged iniquity is shaken by his discovery of a murdered child down a dead-end street . . . setting him on a collision course with the life he left behind. As a former agent with Black House—the secret police—he knows better than anyone that murder in Low Town is an everyday thing, the kind of crime that doesn't get investigated. To protect his home, he will take part in a dangerous game of deception between underworld bosses and the psychotic head of Black House, but the truth is far darker than he imagines. In Low Town, no one can be trusted.

Daniel Polansky has crafted a thrilling novel steeped in noir sensibilities and relentless action, and set in an original world of stunning imagination, leading to a gut-wrenching, unforeseeable conclusion. Low Town is an attention-grabbing debut that will leave readers riveted . . . and hun­gry for more.

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The Edinburgh Dead by Brian Ruckley | August 17, Orbit

I'm a fan of Ruckley's very grim Godless World Trilogy. This one looks to be worlds apart from his earlier work so it will be interesting to see his take on something with a slightly more modern setting.

The year is 1827. For Adam Quire, an officer of the recently formed City Police, Edinburgh is a terrifying place. It is a city populated by mad alchemists and a criminal underclass prepared to treat with the darkest of powers. But nothing can prepare him for the trail of undead hounds, emptied graves, brutal murders and mob violence that will take him into the darkest corners of the underworld and to the highest reaches of elegant Edinburgh society.

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Aloha from the Dead by Richard Kadrey | October 18, Harper Voyager

Sandman Slim Book 3 can't get here soon enough for me. This volume should see some sort of showdown with Stark and the angels that have been plaguing him. No synopsis has been released as of yet.

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Steampunk

Like 2010 it seems a whole lot of Steampunk novels will be released near the end of the year so info on this list is a bit more scant as you go down.

Agatha H. and the Airship City by Phil & Kaja Foglio | January 12, Night Shade | DEBUT

This is the Foglio's prose novel debut based on their Nebula award-winning graphic novel Girl Genius. Fans of Gail Carriger should eat up this series. Sexy herione. Check. Airships. Check. Strange mechanicals. Check.

The Industrial Revolution has escalated into all-out warfare. It has been sixteen years since the Heterodyne Boys, benevolent adventurers and inventors, disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Today, Europe is ruled by the Sparks, dynasties of mad scientists ruling over - and terrorizing - the hapless population with their bizarre inventions and unchecked power, while the downtrodden dream of the Hetrodynes' return. At Transylvania Polygnostic University, a pretty, young student named Agatha Clay seems to have nothing but bad luck. Incapable of building anything that actually works, but dedicated to her studies, Agatha seems destined for a lackluster career as a minor lab assistant. But when the University is overthrown by the ruthless tyrant Baron Klaus Wulfenbach, Agatha finds herself a prisoner aboard his massive airship Castle Wulfenbach - and it begins to look like she might carry a spark of Mad Science after all.

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The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man by Mark Hodder  | March 22, Pyr

The sequel to what I called the best Steampunk novel of 2010 The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack. I'm eager to see how far Hodder takes his alternative timeline. Let the fun ensue.

It is 1862, though not the 1862 it should be...

Time has been altered, and Sir Richard Francis Burton, the king’s agent, is one of the few people who know that the world is now careening along a very different course from that which Destiny intended.

When a clockwork-powered man of brass is found abandoned in Trafalgar Square, Burton and his assistant, the wayward poet Algernon Swinburne, find themselves on the trail of the stolen Garnier Collection—black diamonds rumored to be fragments of the Lemurian Eye of Naga, a meteorite that fell to Earth in prehistoric times.

His investigation leads to involvement with the media sensation of the age: the Tichborne Claimant, a man who insists that he’s the long lost heir to the cursed Tichborne estate. Monstrous, bloated, and monosyllabic, he’s not the aristocratic Sir Roger Tichborne known to everyone, yet the working classes come out in force to support him. They are soon rioting through the streets of London, as mysterious steam wraiths incite all-out class warfare.

From a haunted mansion to the Bedlam madhouse, from South America to Australia, from séances to a secret labyrinth, Burton struggles with shadowy opponents and his own inner demons, meeting along the way the philosopher Herbert Spencer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Florence Nightingale, and Charles Doyle (father of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle).

Can the king’s agent expose a plot that threatens to rip the British Empire apart, leading to an international conflict the like of which the world has never seen? And what part does the clockwork man have to play?

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Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti by Genevieve Valentine  |  April 25, Prime Books  |  DEBUT

Valentine has become one of my favorite new short story writers over the last couple of years. I've been waiting for this one since I first heard the title. It is about a Steampunk style circus in a dystopian future. Need you know more? Oh, very well. A short story placed in this world is available here and as audio here.

It's about a post-apocalyptic steampunk circus, and what happens when a dozen brittle, vicious people are forced to form a makeshift family whether they like it or not. Also, there’s war.

The Mechanical Circus Tresaulti travels the landscape of a ruined country under the spectre of war, but when two of its performers become locked in a battle of wills, the circus’s own past may be the biggest threat of all.

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Camera Obscura by Lavie Tidhar | April 26, Angry Robot

The sequel to one of the most odd Steampunk novels of 2010, The Bookman. This time around it seems the story will focus on different characters and mostly be placed in Paris.

CAN'T FIND A RATIONAL EXPLANATION TO A MYSTERY? CALL IN THE QUIET COUNCIL.

The mysterious and glamorous Lady De Winter is one of their most valuable agents. A despicable murder inside a locked and bolted room on the Rue Morgue in Paris is just the start. This whirlwind adventure will take Milady to the highest and lowest parts of that great city - and cause her to question the very nature of reality itself.

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The Falling Machine by Andrew P. Mayer  | May 24, Pyr  |  DEBUT

A Steampunk Justice League you say? You know I've got to be there for that. This is Mayer's debut and the first in The Society of Steam series.

In 1880 women aren't allowed to vote, much less dress up in a costume and fight crime. But nineteen year-old socialite Sarah Stanton still dreams of becoming a hero. Her opportunity arrives in tragedy when Dennis Darby, the leader of the Society of Paragons—New York’s greatest team of gentlemen adventurers—is murdered right before her eyes. To uncover the truth behind the assassination, Sarah joins forces with Darby's greatest creation; the amazing mechanical man known as The Automaton. Together they begin to unmask a conspiracy at the heart of the Paragons that reveals the world of heroes and high-society is built on a crumbling foundation of greed and lies. But it is only when Sarah comes face to face with the megalomaniacal villain behind the murder that she will discover if she has the courage to sacrifice her life of privilege and truly become the hero she has always wanted to be.

The Society of Steam takes place in a Victorian New York where Fortified Steam allows ordinary men to wield extraordinary abilities, but can also corrupt gentlemen of great moral strength. The formula behind this amazing substance is something that villains will gladly kill for, and a secret that Sarah must try and protect, no matter what the cost.

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Dead of Veridon by Tim Akers  |  May 31, Solaris

This is the sequel to Akers's debut Heart of Veridon, which established the Jacob Burn character as one hard-ass to keep down. Very Noir style set in a very different Steampunk world. This isn't alternative history Steampunk, but more of a second world Fantasy with a lot of Sci-Fi elements.

Trouble finds Jacob Burn: kicked out of his house, out of his comfortable life – out of everything that is familiar – even turned away from his circle of criminal friends and interesting enemies. Two years after he saved an ungrateful city from a mad angel, thwarting the plans of every powerful faction in Veridon, Jacob is still trying to pull his life together. And still trouble finds him. A bad job goes worse, and soon old enemies present themselves as allies, and former friends set themselves against Jacob as he tries to put the dead to rest and the living to justice. Things gets even harder when he’s appointed by the Council to investigate the rise of the cog-dead, while some hold him personally accountable, and others in the city work to use the chaos to their advantage.

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The Clockwork Rocket by Greg Egan  |  July,  Night Shade

This is the first in Egan's Orthogonal series. The synopsis immediate intrigued me and I've been liking Steampunk related stories that are taking place off Earth.

In Yalda's universe, light has mass, no universal speed, and its creation generates energy; on Yalda's world, plants make food by emitting light into the dark night sky. And time is different: an astronaut might measure decades passing while visiting another star, only to return and find that just weeks have elapsed for her friends. On the farm where she lives, Yalda sees strange meteors that are entering the planetary system at an immense, unprecedented speed - and it soon becomes apparent that more of this ultra-fast material is appearing all the time, putting her world in terrible danger. An entire galaxy is about to collide with their own. There is one hope: a fleet sent straight towards the approaching galaxy, as fast as possible. Though it will feel like weeks back home, on board, millennia will pass before the collision, time enough to raise new generations, and time enough to find a way to stop the ultra-fast material. Either way, they have a chance to save everyone back on the home world.

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Heartless by Gail Carriger | July 7, Orbit
Timeless by Gail Carriger | November 3, Orbit

The 4th and 5th novels in the very wry Parasol Protectorate series. Here is the description for Heartless:

Lady Alexia Maccon, soulless, is at it again, only this time the trouble is not her fault. When a mad ghost threatens the queen, Alexia is on the case, following a trail that leads her deep into her husband’s past. Top that off with a sister who has joined the suffragette movement (shocking!), Madame Lefoux’s latest mechanical invention, and a plague of zombie porcupines and Alexia barely has time to remember she happens to be eight months pregnant.

Will Alexia manage to determine who is trying to kill Queen Victoria before it is too late? Is it the vampires again or is there a traitor lurking about in wolf’s clothing? And what, exactly, has taken up residence in Lord Akeldama’s second best closet?

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The Doomsday Vault by Steven Harper | December 1, Ace

This is Harper's first Steampunk novel, but it is the start to a trilogy. In Book One, The Doomsday Vault, Alice Webb and Gavin Michael join an underground police force in Victorian London, where they fight zombies, mad scientists, and air pirates in an attempt to save the British Empire from a terrible plague, only to discover that the cure may be worse than the disease. Books two and three are tentatively titled The Impossible Cube and The Dragon Men. No full description has been release yet.

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Heart of Iron by Ekaterina Sedia  |  Fall 2011?, Prime Books

I'm not sure this belongs in the list as a description hasn't been released so it may not be Steampunk at all. Regardless Sedia is always on my must-read list. If you haven't tried Sedia yet grab The Alchemy of Stone for a good helping of her Clockpunk style.

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Ganymede by Cherie Priest  | Winter 2011, Tor

The third (fourth if you count Clementine) Clockwork Century novel described by Priest as:

My Hunley version 4.0 submarine book about Andan Cly and his crew having a damp misadventure in a Texian-occupied New Orleans, plus Bonus! guerrilla warfare, other assorted historic pirates, and an octoroon madam who moonlights as a Union spy.

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All Men of Genius by Lev AC Rosen | 2011?, Tor | DEBUT

Lev is very well known in the Steampunk culture world, but this is his first novel. The blurb sounds especially delicious.

A steampunk novel inspired by both Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, and Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. The novel follows Violet Adams as she disguises herself as her twin brother to gain entry to Victorian London’s most prestigious scientific academy, and once there, encounters blackmail, mystery, gender confusion, talking rabbits and killer automata.

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