I enjoyed the first book in this series even though I hated the time travel aspects (which were a big part of the story), so I was looking forward to reading another book from Mr. Hodder, without time travel involved. Unfortunately (for me at least), this story did involve time travel and its many paradoxes. Other than that it seemed kind of disjointed, almost more like it was a couple of short stories and then a novella that tied them together.

Not bad though, lots of action and cool steampunk devices, many characters from real history included along with an appendix at the end that talks about what those characters really were like or what they really did.

Squeezed this one in about 10 PM on Dec 31st to fit it into 2021. ( )

This book answers a question that few readers have ever bothered to ask: just how many fantasy elements can you cram into a short steampunk novel, anyway? The answer? Quite a few! We have ghosts, zombies, clairvoyance, ectoplasm, curses, possession, and probably some others I’ve forgotten. This doesn’t count the rather fantastical technology.

This book was about as crazy and fun as the first book. For anybody who read the first book and was annoyed that its science wasn’t very scientific, you’ll probably not want to bother with this one. If you enjoyed the first book, I think you’ll likely enjoy this one also. I enjoyed the first story a bit more, but this book has stronger camaraderie between the characters and I enjoyed that.

I also really enjoyed the bit at the end which kind of explains all the fantasy elements. It doesn’t explain them in a scientific way of course, but it does explain them in an internally consistent way that I thought worked pretty well, and it tied together nicely with events from the first book.

Like the first book, this one tells a complete story. There are just enough dangling threads to make it clear what the next book will be about, and I look forward to reading it. ( )

I started this book, went "meh" and promptly stopped. Life is too short to read mediocre books. However, it has an interesting premise.

In this second installment of Pythonesque weirdness from Mark Hodder, in which a reimagined Richard Francis Burton and Algernon Swinburne protect the British Empire from threats based both on the occult and mad science, the ostensible issue is that of the Tichborne Claimant (based on an actual case of 19th-century impersonation) but that is only the screen for the real threat, of which I'll say no more; otherwise the fairies will come for me. Also, part of the reason I don't rate this novel a little higher is that while I like this kind of thing I know that there are quite a few people who are going to be put off by what Hodder is dishing out. ( )

Steampunk is as a genre occasionally intriguing but often slides into nothing more than a dressing up as Victorians game... this was a little too much of the latter ( )