Let me start by saying yes... yes that is easily the uggliest book cover I have ever seen.
Ugly enough that the first thing I did upon receiving this book in the mail was look up how to make a book cover out of a grocery bag.
Why did I receive such a hideous looking book in the mail in the first place? That's a fair question. I have a steampunk obsession. I know... I know... there's 12 steps that'll cure that right up. It's not a genre I'm going to defend, it's got plenty of flaws, but it's got a lot of promise too. I keep coming back to something a friend said when I confessed my obsession, "Isn't steampunk more of a visual form?"
And she was right. The best steampunk examples I've seen have been visual. But I keep looking for books too. The nice thing has been that anyone even tangentially touching upon the genre seems more than happy to point you in the direction of some more attempts. And there have been a lot of fingers point in the direction of a book called Homunculus by James P. Blaylock. It has been desciribed as one of the earliest examples of the form. So I had Sarah seek it out. Within 15 minutes she had a copy ordered for me... and a couple weeks later I was saving grocery bags for book covers.
The first book that I read by Blaylock was All The Bells on Earth . It was maybe 9 or 10 years ago now.
That book immediately won me over. It was an exquisite example of what Dark Fiction (or Urban Fantasy, or the New Weird, or whatever you call the genre) can do. Unfortunately, since that book I just haven't found another Blaylock book as good.
And this book didn't change that streak. This book wasn't bad, and I guess I judged it two ways.
If I judged it on its own, I probably would have given it a 2 (out of 5... i'm on the good reads rating system now). It starts slow, I didn't really find myself enjoying it until about halfway into the book. The characters are easy to confuse. There's a good sized cast, and they all seem to fall within two groups. The good and the bad. Within those groups the characters are all but interchangeable.
The plot was tangled, but still felt arbitrary. In the end I don't feel like the characters really moved the book, rather they were caught up in it.
Where this book scores points is when judged within the steampunk genre. This was one of the early cornerstones of that form. And in that respect it was a fun read. It did pick up in the second half. And if you like the general setting and style of steampunk stories you'll enjoy this one.
If you're new to the steampunk genre, or curious about it, I'd recommend Extraordinary Engines: The Definitive Steampunk Anthology ed. Nick Gevers as a starting place.
