the strange affair of spring heeled jack by mark hodder

It's an intelligent detail to remember to cover, considering that many Victorian steampunk stories simply expect you to accept the tech a priori, because the writer likes to think his Victorians are just that awesome. Not only has he found clever ways to reimagine the course of the 19th century, he actually establishes within his plot a convincing explanation for why this transformed past has steampunk technology in it at all. Stories that deal with time travel and its paradoxes require such care, and I admire the way Hodder deliberately set himself a difficult challenge and rose to it.Ĭonsider everything Hodder makes sure he has covered. There's a glorious amount of detail here, not only in Hodder's worldbuilding, but in the care with which he's nurtured his plot. But readers who enjoy, say, the manic energy of some of the more recent Doctor Who series are likely to consider that a plus. Occasionally that zeal gets a bit too much for the proceedings. Mark Hodder is a talented talespinner and deft craftsman who builds his bizarro-Victorian world with boundless creative zeal. Long version: While steampunk is starting to be in danger of the level of overexposure that has made the paranormal glut simply unbearable to readers who sadly recall those halcyon days when their bookshop's science fiction racks actually had science fiction in them, at least we're getting more imaginative stories out of it. Perhaps I should knock it off and start talking like a normal human being, lest you leave here completely bewildered as to whether I actually liked the book. Of course, it's a metaphor that's not even remotely steampunk either.

If a painfully extended and completely ridiculous baseball metaphor isn't sufficiently American, I don't know what is. A fly ball or two keeps Hodder from hitting a home run, but he's certainly on his way to the big leagues.

Where George Mann's similar The Affinity Bridge made it reasonably well to first base, Hodder's gaslight-sleuthing debut scores at least a triple. But I can offer up a few Americanisms too, in case you're someone who thinks Anglophilic Americans are a bunch of poseurs.

This is a book that will prompt the Anglophile in you to start saying words like 'fellow'. Were it not for the combination of creative fearlessness and high entertainment value Hodder brings to bear all throughout this alternate-history steampunk extravaganza, you might be justified in wondering if he's simply as mad as much of his cast. Halfway through The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack, there's a reveal so gloriously over the top that you really have no choice but to roll with it.

The strange affair of spring heeled jack by mark hodder