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I wanted, badly, to enjoy this book so much more than I did.The idea is delicious -- a Steampunk London, Victoria kept alive by Mad Science!, a zombie plague sweeping through the underbelly of the city. An agent of the crown with a dark side and a patriotic heart. His dauntless and beautiful assistant. A serial murderer loose in the city. Airships overhead. Automatons clanking through the streets.And yet it failed to work. At all.The book is billed as a "Newberry and Hobbes Investigation" but Mi...
The Affinity Bridge brainstorming session #19Author enters and finds himself on one of two adjacent stages. The only furnishings on his stage are two chairs. In one of the chairs sits O'Bare, a large, hairy man. Author goes and sits on the free chair.Author: Uh, hello.O'Bare: Hello there! I'm O'Bare.Author: That's a peculiar name.O'Bare: Meh, it's needed for a pun at the end of this sketch.Author: Oh, okay. Why are there two stages here?O'Bare: Well that one over there is Stage Right.Author: And...
The epilogue to this book almost caused me to bump this up to a four-star review. Almost. But given that the vast majority of it had me quite comfortably rating it as a 3, I'm going to stay with that. But the ending is just interesting enough to convince to to pick up another.Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook
This is the limited edition hardcover of the book numbered 298 of 500 copies, and is signed by George Mann. This edition contains the additional story "The Hambleton Affair" This edition differs from the regular trade edition in that it's slipcased, has a separate ISBN and includes a facsimile coin.
While in some ways original, this novel combines a number of themes which seem oddly prevalent in recent publications: zombies (The Forest of Hands and Teeth, World War Z An Oral History of the Zombie War, Patient Zero A Joe Ledger Novel, Breathers A Zombie's Lament, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies), automata (The Invention of Hugo Cabret, The Alchemy Of Stone), airships (The Wizard Hunters, Clementine, New Amsterdam,Airborn) in a vaguely steampunkish setting ( Larklight A Rousing Tale of Dauntl...
Must admit to having this on my trl for a few years & wanting a fantasy come Steampunk genre book to read, this has suddenly found it’s way to the top……..It’s 1901 Victorian London with airships, steam driven vehicles, a plague (Zombies) & a serial killer on the loose. Our hero & heroine are the aforementioned Newbury & Hobbes, he being Sir Maurice Newbury gentlemen investigator for the crown & she his newly appointed assistant Miss Veronica Hobbes.The characters are a little bare at the start,
Meh. This reads as if it was written to fulfill a contract obligation, or because "we need a steampunk novel". Too many formulaic components - and this may be a problem with the genre rather than this particular author - and too many chunks of boilerplate text. Every time characters of the opposite sex enter the room, it's tea time. Every time two men come together, it's time for some brandy, sometimes with a pipe. Yawn. Implausible hero. Makes Batman look like a wimp. The more he got hurt/mai...
If this book is Steampunk, then I want to read more of them. Maurice Newbury is a Crown Agent, an investigator of both crimes and the occult for the crown in this delightfully vigorous mystery set in a reworked victorian England full of both elements of science fiction and horror.Revenants (zombie like human creatures, who are victims of a plague from India) are roaming London killing people, but other people are dying by some mysterious means, found strangled. There are odd sightings of a glowi...
An airship disaster, a plague of zombies, vicious automata, and a Sherlock-Holmesian investigator with a smart-and-lovely young female assistant, all in 19th-century London...Not bad - it's reasonably well-done. I'd say it's better written than the last 'steampunk' book I read. However, I still got that feeling that the author was writing in certain elements (well, most of the elements) to cater to current trends rather than because of his personal and abiding passion for these things. I could b...
Sir Maurice Newbury and his assistant Veronica Hobbes investigate an airship crash in Victorian London. Why were all the victims lashed to their seats? Where was the pilot? And why is the Queen so intent on Newbury and Hobbes finding out what happened? The trail leads them to the airship manufacturers who also happen to make automatons. Can Newbury and Hobbes solve the mystery before the mysterious glowing policeman takes them?The Affinity Bridge is a fast-moving steampunk mystery. Once it gets
3 starsIt was ok but left me a little disappointed as it could have been so much more. I picked it up thinking it was an interesting technological take on Sherlock Holmes which was there but for me it was much more akin to James Bond. I loved the idea but it just didn't quite reach those lofty heights.The world building was ok but could have been a but more expressive. It's a short book I know but still could have drawn the reader in more. I did enjoy the steampunk tech elements even if some wer...
"Welcome to the bizarre and dangerous world of Victorian London, a city teetering on the edge of revolution. Its people are ushering in a new era of technology, dazzled each day by new inventions. Airships soar in the skies over the city, whilst ground trains rumble through the streets and clockwork automatons are programmed to carry out menial tasks in the offices of lawyers, policemen and journalists. But beneath this shiny veneer of progress lurks a sinister side. For this is also a world whe...
A zombie plague! Mysterious clockwork automata! Airship crashes! What more could Crown Investigator Sir Maurice Newbury and his capable assistant Miss Veronica Hobbes ask for?(Maybe... an editor?) The story was... solid, I suppose, but I felt no connection whatsoever to the characters, and there was only one part of the mystery that even mildly surprised me. The prose was functional but not clever, and the dialogue seemed to waver confusedly between Victorian and modern (neither of which I would...
A boringly written, sexist pile of crap.My brother, an aficionado of space-romps, bought this book based solely on the awesomeness of the cover. It is indeed an awesome cover. I was suckered in by the gold highlights and embossing and read it on holiday, expecting it to be a simple read with a quick fire plot and plenty of wacky characters to go around.In some ways I wasn’t disappointed: it’s certainly a page turner. It’s easy to read and the plot is delightfully silly, marrying a zombie plague
I get it, I get it. Steampunk is "in." Zombies are "in." Speculation about androids is "in." But do we really need to put them all in one book? Mann does nothing but attempt to cater to the masses in this mess of genre-fiction. Bland writing and flat dialogue round out a cast of indistinguishable characters. Even the cheesiest (but still fun) genre series (think Dresden Files, Anita Blake, etc.) at least have characters with some spunk and differentiation--and if you're writing what you're hopin...
Apologies to my dear friend (http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/39...), but I could not manage to finish this. It's not because it's a pastiche. Those are great. The writing itself bothered me. The author repeats passages of exposition almost word-for-word: p. 21 "After the last of the thieves turned up dead, the 'glowing bobby' was never seen again"; p. 39 "Once they were dead, the 'glowing bobby' disappeared, never to be seen again." The setting and dialogue are not very believable either, and...
This wasn't a bad little story. It moved along at a fair pace, it had some interesting characterizations - and I love anachronistic female characters - and the mystery wasn't entirely obvious, though it was hardly surprising, either.I figured it out the first time Veronica visited her sister, and I was kind of annoyed that she didn't.I was going to bump this up to a 3 1/2 stars, but then came the part with the impossibly unstoppable man.Ok - here be some spoilers **So, our hero gets himself inju...
If you're a fan of mystery, science fiction, or steampunk literature with little to no characterization and a deep focus on plot and things like zombies, robots, and airships, then you will appreciate this book much more than I did. That kind of sounds awful. I don't mean to say that this book is bad, but I do think it could have been much better. I had an extraordinarily hard time getting into it, mostly because I couldn't visualize anything that I was reading. It's not even that the plot isn't...
3.5 stars – another reviewer stated that this was a pretty simple, straightforward book and I agree. Nonetheless, it was very enjoyable and I recommend it for a fun, easy read.It’s a Sherlock Holmes, Victorian setting adventure with a Steampunk aspect – the story is predictable and the characters are stock but it’s still very well done. The author knew his genre and worked within it in a creative way. This is one of the better examples of this type of work. If you enjoy Sherlock Holmes (especial...
This is the first book I have read by George Mann and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The story is set in Victorian London and has all the 'steam punk' elements of airships, land trains and clockwork automatons programmed by punch cards. Victoria is still Queen but is kept alive on a life support machine. Her Empire is looked after by secret agents like Sir Maurice Newbury - Gentleman investigator for the crown. He and his recently appointed assistant Miss Veronica Hobbes are called to investigate the