A review by corita
Phoenix Rising by Pip Ballantine, Tee Morris

3.0

Hold On to Your Tea Cup

Agent Books is an archivist, glorified librarian and cataloger of unusual artifacts, and Agent Braun is an unruly field agent who has trouble following rules. They have been naughty, and their superiors have demoted Agent Braun to the archives–Books and Braun are stuck with each other in the dank underground storage area that houses strange and mysterious artifacts.

No, it’s not your imagination. The story practically shouts Warehouse 13 in Victorian England.

They work for the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences, protectors of the British Empire and collectors of “unusual” artifacts. Braun is not content to serve her time in the archives and decides to investigate the case her partner was working on when he went crazy. Bruan pulls Books into her investigation, and as the story progressives a reader might begin to wonder who in this duo is more crazy.

Phoenix Rising: A Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Novel by Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris is a Steampunk adventure with explosives, carriage chases, daring rescues, beautiful mercenary agents, evil geniuses, automatons, lots of steam, bigoted wealthy people who wish to take over the world, and two agents who blunter into places they really shouldn’t. Add to all that, their director’s mysterious shenanigans in the archive’s secret, locked room. “What’s he up to?” is a story question left hanging for book two.

Who Will Like this?

People who love lighthearted Steampunk adventures will definitely like this book. It was a fun read. The book doesn’t take itself too seriously and neither should the reader. It has a little bit of everything: adventure, death, steam, sex, underworld slime, wealthy slime.


James Blaylock, J. W. Jeter, and Tim Powers, the fathers of steampunk, have said that when they started writing Steampunk they weren’t trying to make a serious statement; they were having fun telling zany stories. This book is written in the same vein.

Confession Time

I wanted to like this story; however, I had trouble getting into it. I read two other books in between putting Phoenix Rising aside and picking it up again. It just didn’t grab me. I think most people who like Steampunk would enjoy it. For me, it was okay, predictable, and flat. In other words, nothing to shout about.

Here are the issues I had:

1. There was nothing new, and some of the story seemed borrowed without much effort to move in new directions.

2. The protagonists were stereotypes, the typical buddy cops/investigators/agents. Braun was the wild crazy one and Books the mild mannered sane one. Casting Braun as a woman didn’t change the dynamics because she fit the crazy cop/agent mold to a tee.

3. The antagonists were also bad stereotypes, James Bond villains stepping back into Victorian England. I expected one of them to twist his handlebar mustache–thankfully that didn’t happen.

Character driven novels pull me into a story and keep me engaged. I want to care about the characters--that didn’t happen in this book.