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A review by michaelcattigan
The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack by Mark Hodder
4.0
Some books are born great.
Some books achieve greatness.
Some books have greatness thrust upon them.
This book is not one of them. It's not great. It's not beautifully written. It's not literary.
But it is immensely fun!
Mark Hodder propels us into Victorian London: the search for the source of the Nile, Stanley, Livingstone, Sir Richard Francis Burton, Oscar Wilde and Algernon Swinburne, Darwin, Babbage and Isambard Kingdom Brunel; smog, hansom cabs, Penny Farthings. And giant, genetically engineered swans pulling kites in which people can sit.
Yes, giant swans. Yes, genetic engineering. Huge elephantine megadrays. Trained parakeets for delivering verbal messages - spiced with additional swear words of the parakeets' own choice. Werewolves. Flying steam powered armchairs. Even the Penny Farthings are motorised.
There are two basic sects in Albertian London: Libertines who celebrate freedom, art, poetry and sexual experimentation and their slightly more extreme brethren the Rakes for whom every law is an undue limit on their freedom; and scientists who are split between Engineers and Eugenicists.
Hodder's London is a steampunk alternate history world which gives Hodder plenty of opportunity to be playful and inventive. At times, I felt he was at risk of becoming somewhat self indulgent in his creativity and re-interpretation of Victoria's London into Albert's but there is a cracking yarn at the heart of the story which knots it together.
Our hero is Sir Richard Burton - soldier, explorer and linguist - scarred physically and mentally from expeditions in Africa and the debate with his friend John Speke over the source of the Nile - adrift in a world that seems to be turning its back on him. Until he is offered the position of King's Agent with the brief to investigate the weird and unusual. Yes, there are weirder and more unusual things in the world than giant swans. Werewolves or loup-garou for example; and Spring-Heeled Jack.
Burton is accompanied and assisted by Algernon Swinburne, the poet whose incarnation here is a libertine influenced by de Sade but small and childish he gives the infamous and deadly Burton something of a foil ... and an opportunity to infiltrate the chimney sweeps of London. He was the weakest character in the book for me: he didn't offer much and the humour he added was a tad puerile and focused on his sexual enjoyment of some of the beatings he received. Whereas the were elements of Holmes about Burton; Swinburne didn't balance him the way Watson balances Holmes.
The explanation for Spring-Heeled Jack was one that I guessed pretty quickly but is, I guess, a spoiler. Perhaps it will suffice to say that 10th of June 1840 is the critical date in the novel: the day in (true) history when Edward Oxford attempted to assassinate Queen Victoria. It has to be true: its in Wikipedia! Imagine the effect of that assassination attempt on his descendants, the shame forever attached to the family. Imagine them wishing that he had never made that attempt...
As I said at the beginning, this was not a great book; it was a fun, well imagined, romp through a steampunk alternative universe. It is creative and well paced; it works as steampunk and it works as an action/thriller.
Good. Clean. Fun.
No real thinking required.
And there's nothing wrong with that!
This is a debut novel and clearly - whilst self contained - anticipated to be part of a series: not all the antagonists are captured or disposed of and it is a rich world full of potential and two further books have been written The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man and Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon.
Worth a look?
Hell yeah!
Some books achieve greatness.
Some books have greatness thrust upon them.
This book is not one of them. It's not great. It's not beautifully written. It's not literary.
But it is immensely fun!
Mark Hodder propels us into Victorian London: the search for the source of the Nile, Stanley, Livingstone, Sir Richard Francis Burton, Oscar Wilde and Algernon Swinburne, Darwin, Babbage and Isambard Kingdom Brunel; smog, hansom cabs, Penny Farthings. And giant, genetically engineered swans pulling kites in which people can sit.
Yes, giant swans. Yes, genetic engineering. Huge elephantine megadrays. Trained parakeets for delivering verbal messages - spiced with additional swear words of the parakeets' own choice. Werewolves. Flying steam powered armchairs. Even the Penny Farthings are motorised.
There are two basic sects in Albertian London: Libertines who celebrate freedom, art, poetry and sexual experimentation and their slightly more extreme brethren the Rakes for whom every law is an undue limit on their freedom; and scientists who are split between Engineers and Eugenicists.
Hodder's London is a steampunk alternate history world which gives Hodder plenty of opportunity to be playful and inventive. At times, I felt he was at risk of becoming somewhat self indulgent in his creativity and re-interpretation of Victoria's London into Albert's but there is a cracking yarn at the heart of the story which knots it together.
Our hero is Sir Richard Burton - soldier, explorer and linguist - scarred physically and mentally from expeditions in Africa and the debate with his friend John Speke over the source of the Nile - adrift in a world that seems to be turning its back on him. Until he is offered the position of King's Agent with the brief to investigate the weird and unusual. Yes, there are weirder and more unusual things in the world than giant swans. Werewolves or loup-garou for example; and Spring-Heeled Jack.
Burton is accompanied and assisted by Algernon Swinburne, the poet whose incarnation here is a libertine influenced by de Sade but small and childish he gives the infamous and deadly Burton something of a foil ... and an opportunity to infiltrate the chimney sweeps of London. He was the weakest character in the book for me: he didn't offer much and the humour he added was a tad puerile and focused on his sexual enjoyment of some of the beatings he received. Whereas the were elements of Holmes about Burton; Swinburne didn't balance him the way Watson balances Holmes.
The explanation for Spring-Heeled Jack was one that I guessed pretty quickly but is, I guess, a spoiler. Perhaps it will suffice to say that 10th of June 1840 is the critical date in the novel: the day in (true) history when Edward Oxford attempted to assassinate Queen Victoria. It has to be true: its in Wikipedia! Imagine the effect of that assassination attempt on his descendants, the shame forever attached to the family. Imagine them wishing that he had never made that attempt...
As I said at the beginning, this was not a great book; it was a fun, well imagined, romp through a steampunk alternative universe. It is creative and well paced; it works as steampunk and it works as an action/thriller.
Good. Clean. Fun.
No real thinking required.
And there's nothing wrong with that!
This is a debut novel and clearly - whilst self contained - anticipated to be part of a series: not all the antagonists are captured or disposed of and it is a rich world full of potential and two further books have been written The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man and Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon.
Worth a look?
Hell yeah!