Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Following on The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack, Richard Burton and his trusted sidekick Algernon Swinburne are tasked with once again discovering the truth in The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man by Mark Hodder. As with the first book, the author steeps this volume in as much alternate history as speculative fiction that leads to a rousing tale of intrigue, adventure, and tremendous peril.
Joined by the philosopher Herbert Spencer, Burton and Swinburne, along with several trusted allies, must get to the bottom of the Tichborne Affair. Someone claims to be Roger Tichborne, once lost at sea, heir to the Tichborne estate, but Burton believes otherwise. Tasked by the Prime Minister to get to the bottom of the affair, Burton discovers there is much more at stake than just a cursed estate. The people are rioting, the lower class calling for the undoing of the upper class, and it seems the grotesquely large Tichborne claimant has more than just persuasive powers on his side. To further complicate matters, Burton and Swinburne find themselves up against more than just physical foes as they have to fight their own minds in order to survive.
The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man follows nicely on Spring Heeled Jack. Burton and Swinburne are as opposed in disposition as in the previous book, but just as brave as well. The addition of Herbert Spencer as a character is a pleasent surprise as he proves to be both wise and helpful, in particular when least expected. Burton for his part is tormented from time to time by past events and visions of the future.
While delightful in itself, this volume works best as a follow up from the previous and is, in some ways, an excellent middle volume, for there is surely more to come as is more than hinted at by the end of the book. While slightly predictable in its way, The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man is well executed, easily readable, and full of more than a few surprises. All around, nearly as enjoyable as the first and nearly as educational. Here's to hoping the next book arrives sooner rather than later.
Click Here to see more reviews about: The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man: (Burton & Swinburne In)
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 seances 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?
Burton and Swinburne's second adventure—The Clockwork Man Of Trafalgar Square—is filled with eccentric steam-driven technology, grotesque characters, and a deepening mystery that pushes forward the three-volume story arc begun in The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack.
Click here for more information about The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man: (Burton & Swinburne In)
0 comments:
Post a Comment