Joseph Rollins

The story is set in the time of Queen Victoria in a world where the British Empire dominates the world completely. No US War of Independence occurred, and Britain therefore must have the vast resources of North America to draw upon. The technology is primarily driven by steam which has now extended to machines, both at the macro and micro level, that can fly, record conversations, communicate, amongst other abilities. These machines being developed and maintained by advanced Freemason engineers.

That said, I have to say I did enjoy this book although that meant I had to ignore my knowledge of some British history and the operation of its government. Part of the that included a difficulty in categorising the genre of the story, I finally came to the conclusion that it was an adventure, alternate historical, science fiction, dystopian novel.

When I delved into the background of the Author, Joseph Rollins, I found that he is an US citizen from Arizona, that did provide some explanation why some aspect of the story did not fit with British culture and history. Long distance transportation is done by air in Zeppelins and these have also replaced ocean going ships in the Royal Navy for battleships and army transport. It is interesting to note that Zeppelins are named after the German inventor and designer, for what the British called Airships. Queen Victoria appears to directly govern the armed forces as well as deciding policy and tactics for expansion of the Empire including the responses to resistance and revolution. The story contains little concerning of the operation of the elected government of Britain and how that relates to the crown, which does suggest a lack of knowledge of these things from the author.

The characters also use a lot of modern language in the interactions with other characters, words I am sure would have been widely unknown in Victorian times, especially in the ruling classes.

The story is a good one and I found it entertaining, but I am not sure therefore why the British Empire and Victorian period were selected for the setting when a unattributed setting would have worked just as well.… (mais)

I’m not a big fan of steampunk or alternate history, but the description of this book interested me enough to want to read it. First the bad: the book really should have been edited/proof read before being published. There are numerous places I noticed where words are missing, words are duplicated, or there are grammatical errors. While none of these where enough to make the book unreadable, a few did make me have to stop and re-read a passage to be sure I understood it. That aside, the book has two separate storylines: the main one about resistance to the British Empire and a secondary one which seems to be about how the British Empire became the dominate world power. In my opinion the secondary storyline, which is only a handful of pages in total, is both unnecessary and detracts from the main storyline.

I found the main storyline compelling and thought that most of the characters were well rounded and mostly believable, except for the main villain, who was a parody of the stereotypical villain in children’s cartoons, silent movies and stage melodramas, right down to his twirling his mustache. The plot was also decent, beginning more as a mystery before evolving into an adventure story and then a war story, in a natural progression that was not jarring. The author also handled war in a realistic way (i.e., actual deaths of characters on both sides) and answered questions presented earlier in the story. It also had a far from happy ending, which is more reflective of real life.

Overall, I enjoyed the story and would be interested in reading more stories set in this world. Not necessarily with all the same protagonists, although maybe one or two of them, but the world building hinted at many other possibilities that could be mined for storylines.… (mais)