THE RED PLAGUE AFFAIR

TITLE: THE RED PLAGUE AFFAIR

AUTHOR: LILITH SAINTCROW

Pages: 294

Date: 23/05/2013

Grade: 4+

Details: no. 2 Bannon and Clare Case

            Received from Orbit

            Through Nudge

Own

Archibald Clare is a Mentath, a genius detective with exceptional powers of observation and deduction. Emma Bannon is his opposite in every way. She is a Prime sorceress who has only gotten more powerful after the events in The Iron Wyrm Affair. According to established wisdom these two polar opposites shouldn’t be able to work together, after all magic and logic are opposing forces. In practice though Bannon and Clare form a talented and successful team when it comes to investigating crimes against the Empire.

When Queen Victrix instructs Emma to find and return a missing doctor in possession of a deadly new weapon, she turns to Clare for assistance. And it isn’t long before they discover that this new weapon is powerful enough to bring death and destruction not just to Londinium but to the whole world. And with no known cure, not even our heroes are immune to the poison that is about to be released. Because once the red plague has been unleashed upon the capital, nobody, regardless of their rank or position will be able to escape its deadly power.

And so we find ourselves back in what is the steampunk version of Victorian England. Imaginative and well developed this world is both very recognisable and completely alien. Lilith Saintcrow makes clever use of historical facts and figures, both fictional and real, although she changes them enough to ensure that the reader never forgets that they are inhabiting an alternate universe.

Archibald Clare is strongly based on Sherlock Holmes, something which is emphasized with sentences such as:

“It is elementary, sir.”

And when a character named Kim Finchwilliam Rudyard is introduced it shouldn’t surprise anyone when he states:

“The female of her species is deadly.”

In many ways the author has taken events and people to fantastical new heights. Archibald Clare is not just an exceptionally clever man he is a member of an exclusive and specially trained group of talented people, born with extreme mental powers. The Queen, Victrix, is the chosen vessel of Britannia, the ever continuing spirit ruling the Empire and as such two different creatures; one human and vulnerable the other ruthless and indestructible. And the same is true for the various districts of Londinium. With names close enough to those we are familiar with, they resemble their real world counterparts while at the same time being something more; darker, more sinister or brighter. In fact, the author has given the reader the opportunity to engage in two mysteries. There is the disaster our two heroes have to try to divert and then there is the quest to trace characters and places back to their Victorian original.

Bannon and Clare are fully-fleshed and fascinating characters to read about. Observing how they work together, despite their differences, watching them develop ever increasing respect for the others’ exceptional powers and witnessing them dealing with the feelings they may or may not have about each other is a pure delight.

While it isn’t absolutely necessary to read “The Iron Wyrm Affair” before starting this book I would advice readers to do so. This alternate Victorian world is well established and explained in the first book and some events from the first story are referred to in a manner that relies on the reader being aware of what happened in the first book.

This is not a light or a fast read. Fascinating and thrilling as it is, it pays to take your time while reading this book. The characters, the world they move in and the mysteries they’re up against all are multi-facetted. It is easy to miss hints and clues if you allow yourself to get caught up in the heat of the chase and start turning the pages too fast. This is a good thing though since it gives the book an added depth. The language used in this book is also slightly different from what we are used to. While this certainly helps to keep the reader rooted in the alternate world, it also means that real attention needs to be paid to what is actually being said.

This is more than just another intriguing mystery set in an alternate Victorian England; this is a well thought out tale in a fully realised world with characters that are as intriguing as they are relatable. In short, this is a fascinating story and imaginative book.

THE COMPANY OF THE DEAD

TITLE: THE COMPANY OF THE DEAD

AUTHOR: DAVID J. KOWALSKI

Pages: 750

Date: 21/03/2012

Grade: 5

Details: Received from BookGeeks

Own

It is April 1912 and Jonathan Wells is travelling on the Titanic towards New York. Armed with knowledge that he shouldn’t be able to have he is on a mission to save the ship from the iceberg that would make the ship's maiden-voyage also her last. His action will have shocking results for the world, results Wells couldn’t have foreseen and doesn’t live to experience.

In April 2012 a newly build copy of the Titanic is finishing its anniversary voyage to New York under captain Lightholler, a descendant of two passengers on the original ship. His ship is sailing through a world in which America never entered World War I and is split along a newly established Mason-Dickson line and the whole world is divided up between two empires ruled by Japan from the east and Germany from the west.

In this version of America Joseph Kennedy, grand-nephew to John F. Kennedy is on a mission to restore history to what it should have been. Armed with Wells’ journal and the same means of travelling through time, Kennedy is determined to save the world from the faith that awaits it as a result of Wells’ well meant but disastrous intervention.

While Kennedy is assembling the team he needs to accomplish his goal he is being pursuit by his military superiors, represented by Agent Patricia Malcolm, a woman he has a history with.

With the world on the brink of a massive conflict and nuclear weapons being available to the armies for the first time, Kennedy and his team have to stay alive and ahead of their pursuers for long enough to be able to get back to the Titanic and save the world from certain destruction in a quest that may well end up killing Kennedy, if not all of them.

This is an ambitious and fascinating book. David Kowalski has gone all out in creating an alternative world for us and created a place that we can still recognise yet different enough from our reality to make you wonder what if. What if America really hadn’t entered World War I, what if Hitler had never come to power, what if America had not remained the United States, what if…. There are too many what-ifs to list them all here, and all of them are plausible enough to make you shudder.

It takes a while before the reader has a real idea of what is going on in the story. Kowalski takes his time introducing the characters and even longer revealing their motivation and with a few characters I still wasn’t sure exactly what they were up to by the time the book had ended.

This is a book that is hard to categorize. A lot of different genres are integrated into one narrative whole. This is an alternative history story with elements that are pure science-fiction. We find ourselves in the middle of a strategic war story, as well as a fast paced thriller with conspiracies thrown in and some romance for good measure.

The reader is taken from the Titanic to Roswell and back to the Titanic in a story that opens their eyes to the fragility of history. The big question in this book is whether history develops according to a certain path or whether it is all a matter of chance, a question I will be pondering for a while yet.

For me there were one or two downsides to this novel. The military strategizing was way over my head and I found I couldn’t quite visualise the battle scenes. I’m convinced though that this is probably a result of my mind-set rather than any failing on the author’s part.

There was one story-line that I still couldn’t make complete sense of even after I finished the book, one character whose motivation and ultimate goal never became completely clear to me.

I also feel that Kowalski’s emphasis on action came at the cost of good characterisation. Although I did get some feeling for the various personalities in this book there wasn’t a whole lot of depth to them.

Overall, I have to conclude that this is an original, fascinating and almost impossible to put down book. While I thoroughly enjoyed this reading experience I think anybody who loves science fiction and/or time-travel and/or alternative histories will adore this book.

01/04/2012
While I initially rated this book 4.5, I have today upped that rating to a solid 5. A book that still occupies my thoughts over a week after finishing it, deserves a top rating.