Reviews :: Book Genre :: Steampunk
This archive contains links to all of the Steampunk Book Reviews we've written over the years. If you've come here looking for something in that realm, you're in luck! We just happen to have more than a few suggestions lying around the place waiting for your perusal.
If you're looking for something else, say a book in another genre or maybe just any book that we happened to think was awesome-sauce, browse around the site for a bit and check out our reviews.
Just don't forget to let us know what you thought of a book you've read or if there's a suggestion you have for something we'd like to read! We're always looking for another way to build a better machine off the power of steam. And goggles are always freaking cool.
By Fire Above
Josette is the captain of the airship Mistral, and after the events of THE GUNS ABOVE (EBR review), she’s made enough of a name for herself that she doesn’t have to worry about the powers-that-be of taking her ship away from her. But the war with the Vins continues to rage, and making a name for oneself means that her and her crew are thrown once again into the fray to fight for Garnia.
But the scariest thing Josette will do is navigate the Garnian royal court.
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The Guns Above
If you were disappointed in my mediocre rating for ARABELLA OF MARS (EBR review), then here is the book that will fulfill your military-steampunk airship cravings and to spare. THE GUNS ABOVE is everything ARABELLA isn’t: engaging characters, easy to read prose, exciting plot, hilarious dialogue, and a lead female character with brains.
Hallelujah.
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Arabella of Mars
Teenage Arabella Ashby was born and raised on the planet Mars–in a steampunk Victorian Era of inter-planetary ship travel. So imagine sea ships that travel between planets, Victorian manners and mores, and a Burroughs-like Mars landscape. David Levine’s ARABELLA OF MARS has been compared as a mashup of Horatio Hornblower, Burroughs’s Mars books, and Jane Austin, a conglomeration of all the things we love best about those three genres with steampunk thrown in.
Unfortunately it’s also dreadfully dull.
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Karen Memory
If you haven’t read anything by Elizabeth Bear you are seriously missing out. This woman can write anything. Anything I tell you. Norse mythology? (Amazon) Check. Vikings and telepathic wolves? (EBR Review) Yep. Magic in the Steppe? (EBR Review) You bet. And now she’s written a book that takes place in a steampunk version of a port city in the Washington Territory post-Civil War with a Jack the Ripper serial killer on the loose.
It’s as awesome as it sounds.
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Wings of Sorrow and Bone
Rivka loves machines, but she’s a girl in a man’s world. She’s moved to the city to be with her grandmother, whose social circle involves the rich and famous. During a social event, Rivka makes a new friend, Tatiana, and as mischievous girls are wont to do, they find themselves somewhere they don’t belong–in this case it’s a basement room. It’s not any basement room, however. Owner of said basement, Mr. Cody, is financing the creation of a chimera from mechanical parts and pieces of recently living gremlins.
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The Aeronaut’s Windlass
I’m kind of a late-comer to the whole Jim Butcher Bandwagon. I tried his first book of the Codex Alera series and wasn’t all that impressed. A few years later I read STORM FRONT and thought it was decent, but nothing to crow about. Perhaps preemptive, yes, but I think I’ve mentioned my tolerance level for good story somewhere. Then fairly recently, I knocked out books two and three of the Dresden series because people would just not shut up about them… and I haven’t been able to get enough of that series ever since; cramming another book in whenever I can. I’m about halfway to caught up with it right now. I’ve been telling myself for more than a few months now that I needed to pick up this new series, because seriously how could it not be awesome? So,when I found it on audio book laying around at my local library, I checked to be sure we hadn’t already reviewed it and then snatched it up. Really glad that I did.
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Fiction River: Alchemy and Steam
I love the art of the short story, and always have. I’ve written a few myself, much to the conspicuous delight of mostly bored teachers and professors, leading me to believe I had “it” and would someday write something really fabulous. But in the real world, the “it” factor is oh-so-rare. I am happy to say that several of the stories in this anthology have at least a spark of brilliance and, in several cases, more than just a spark. Just look at the gorgeous cover art, hinting at the awesome content within!
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Airships of Camelot
The title AIRSHIPS OF CAMELOT (Amazon) pretty much gives away what this book is: a King Arthur and steampunk mashup. Usually I’d hesitate reading something like this, but since it was written by Robison Wells of VARIANT (EBR Review) fame, I was actually excited.
Turns out it’s a really fun read.
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The Dragon Lantern
In THE LEAGUE OF SEVEN (EBR Review), our young heroes Archie, Hachi, and Fergus (along with Archie’s trusty Tik Tok man Mr. Rivets) worked together to stop the Mangleborn monster from the Florida swamps. They discovered that these creatures are buried all over the Earth, waiting for the day when they will be freed from their prisons and can take over humanity. It is only a new League of Seven–a tinker, a law-bringer, a scientist, a trickster, a warrior, a strongman, and a hero–who can stop them.
Now, in THE DRAGON LANTERN (Amazon), with the first three members of new League discovered, they are sent on a quest by the Septemberist Society and Mrs. Moffitt to recover the Dragon Lantern. She believes this was the artifact that transformed Archie and may hold the answers to his past.
But immediately upon recovering the lantern it’s stolen.
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The League of Seven
Archie Dent’s parents are members of a secret society that knows about the giant monsters who want to enslave humanity. He’s always known about the Mangleborn who were buried by past League of Seven members, aided by the Septemberist Society. The League is always seven: a tinker, a law-bringer, a scientist, a trickster, a warrior, a strongman, and a hero. And now that the Mangleborn are attempting to escape again, a new League will form.
But all Archie knows right now is that his parents have been brainwashed by Manglespawn and in order to save them, he needs help. Along the way he meets Hachi, a Seminole girl with impressive skills with a knife; Fergus, a Yankee with an aptitude for machines; and there’s the Tik Tok machine man named Mr. Rivets, owned by Archie’s parents and tasked to keep his young charge safe.
But it’s only by working together that they can stop Edison from waking the Mangleborn buried in the swamps of Florida.
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