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Newbury and Hobbes #1
The Affinity Bridge
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 where ghostly policemen haunt the fog-laden alleyways of Whitechapel, where cadavers can rise from the dead and where Sir Maurice Newbury, Gentleman Investigator for the Crown, works tirelessly to protect the Empire from her foes.
When an airship crashes in mysterious circumstances, Sir Maurice and his recently appointed assistant Miss Veronica Hobbes are called in to investigate. Meanwhile, Scotland Yard is baffled by a spate of grisly murders and a terrifying plague is ravaging the slums of the city.
So begins an adventure quite unlike any other, a thrilling steampunk mystery and the first in the series of "Newbury & Hobbes" investigations.
But beneath this shiny veneer of progress lurks a sinister side. For this is also a world where ghostly policemen haunt the fog-laden alleyways of Whitechapel, where cadavers can rise from the dead and where Sir Maurice Newbury, Gentleman Investigator for the Crown, works tirelessly to protect the Empire from her foes.
When an airship crashes in mysterious circumstances, Sir Maurice and his recently appointed assistant Miss Veronica Hobbes are called in to investigate. Meanwhile, Scotland Yard is baffled by a spate of grisly murders and a terrifying plague is ravaging the slums of the city.
So begins an adventure quite unlike any other, a thrilling steampunk mystery and the first in the series of "Newbury & Hobbes" investigations.
350 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2008
166 people are currently reading
8968 people want to read
About the author
George Mann
336 books669 followersGeorge Mann is an author and editor, primarily in genre fiction. He was born in Darlington, County Durham in 1978.
A former editor of Outland, Mann is the author of The Human Abstract, and more recently The Affinity Bridge and The Osiris Ritual in his Newbury and Hobbes detective series, set in an alternate Britain, and Ghosts of Manhattan, set in the same universe some decades later.
He wrote the Time Hunter novella "The Severed Man", and co-wrote the series finale, Child of Time.
He has also written numerous short stories, plus Doctor Who and Sherlock Holmes audiobooks for Big Finish Productions. He has edited a number of anthologies including The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, The Solaris Book of New Fantasy and a retrospective collection of Sexton Blake stories, Sexton Blake, Detective, with an introduction by Michael Moorcock.
A former editor of Outland, Mann is the author of The Human Abstract, and more recently The Affinity Bridge and The Osiris Ritual in his Newbury and Hobbes detective series, set in an alternate Britain, and Ghosts of Manhattan, set in the same universe some decades later.
He wrote the Time Hunter novella "The Severed Man", and co-wrote the series finale, Child of Time.
He has also written numerous short stories, plus Doctor Who and Sherlock Holmes audiobooks for Big Finish Productions. He has edited a number of anthologies including The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, The Solaris Book of New Fantasy and a retrospective collection of Sexton Blake stories, Sexton Blake, Detective, with an introduction by Michael Moorcock.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 805 reviews
February 19, 2019
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.
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.
April 21, 2010
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 going, it's definitely a page turner. The action feels very much like a movie. Sir Maurice Newbury is a combination of James Bond and Sherlock Holmes, complete with laudanum addiction, and Hobbes is like a Victorian Emma Peel. The setting was probably my favorite part of the book. A London with airships, automatons, Queen Victoria kept alive by machines, a zombie plague in the slums, what's not to like?
So why did I only give it a 3? The characters are a little on the thin side. In fact, I was ready to blast this book in one of the early chapters. Newbury, although supposedly a great detective, misses some really obvious things only to have Hobbes suggest them. Not very Sherlockian if you ask me.
Still, this is a quick and enjoyable read. It's not the best steampunk book ever written by any means but it's fun and fairly accessible. It's actually a little light on the steampunk side. I'd recommend it to fans of steampunk in general, as well of those of The Domino Men and The Somnambulist.
The Affinity Bridge is a fast-moving steampunk mystery. Once it gets going, it's definitely a page turner. The action feels very much like a movie. Sir Maurice Newbury is a combination of James Bond and Sherlock Holmes, complete with laudanum addiction, and Hobbes is like a Victorian Emma Peel. The setting was probably my favorite part of the book. A London with airships, automatons, Queen Victoria kept alive by machines, a zombie plague in the slums, what's not to like?
So why did I only give it a 3? The characters are a little on the thin side. In fact, I was ready to blast this book in one of the early chapters. Newbury, although supposedly a great detective, misses some really obvious things only to have Hobbes suggest them. Not very Sherlockian if you ask me.
Still, this is a quick and enjoyable read. It's not the best steampunk book ever written by any means but it's fun and fairly accessible. It's actually a little light on the steampunk side. I'd recommend it to fans of steampunk in general, as well of those of The Domino Men and The Somnambulist.
May 19, 2014
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
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
June 11, 2012
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/maimed and carried on by Sheer Grit, the more I thought of Monty Python's armless, legless Black Knight saying, "It's only a flesh wound."
And a fight scene on top of a moving train? Puh-leeze. Is that a tribute to older books or something? Can't think of another reason to roll out such a dusty old trope. Especially the part where he is This must be a tribute to the days of pulp novels. But as I read it I imagined the author laughing at the gullible reader. This part was almost an insult to the reader.
We are asked to believe that automata can be programmed by punch cards to serve tea. OK, maybe we do have a whole generation that has never SEEN a punch card, much less used them and programmed with them, but I have been there and done that, and this is taurine excrement. This is right up there with the adeledicnander drive and and the Hulk punching out a spaceship.
There were a few good ideas in here, so I'm not quite into "there go three hours of my life that I'll never get back" territory, but I'm close. This is the fast-food version of steampunk.
I won't bother with the sequel.
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/maimed and carried on by Sheer Grit, the more I thought of Monty Python's armless, legless Black Knight saying, "It's only a flesh wound."
And a fight scene on top of a moving train? Puh-leeze. Is that a tribute to older books or something? Can't think of another reason to roll out such a dusty old trope. Especially the part where he is This must be a tribute to the days of pulp novels. But as I read it I imagined the author laughing at the gullible reader. This part was almost an insult to the reader.
We are asked to believe that automata can be programmed by punch cards to serve tea. OK, maybe we do have a whole generation that has never SEEN a punch card, much less used them and programmed with them, but I have been there and done that, and this is taurine excrement. This is right up there with the adeledicnander drive and and the Hulk punching out a spaceship.
There were a few good ideas in here, so I'm not quite into "there go three hours of my life that I'll never get back" territory, but I'm close. This is the fast-food version of steampunk.
I won't bother with the sequel.
September 10, 2009
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 Dauntless Pluck in the Farthest Reaches of Space, New Amsterdam again, Dark Sleeper A Novel, Girl Genius Vol. 1 Agatha Heterodyne & the Beetleburg Clank). An easy and fairly entertaining read, it is marred by a certain flatness of tone and characterization. There was no real sense of suspense or emotional engagement. Disappointing, although I would be willing to give a sequel a chance.
January 12, 2010
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 Miss Hobbes is barely a sketch. She does very little and we get almost nothing of her personality (other than the fact that she's swooooooony over Sir Maurice) or her background. The most interesting thing we learn is that she has a sister who can tell the future and is locked in an asylum. The last chapter is, I think, supposed to shed some mysterious light on Miss Hobbes and make us rethink all that's come before, but since she was essentially just arm candy to Sir Maurice, I didn't really give a hoot about the big revelation.
(I almost think that the police chief, Bainbridge, was supposed to be the buddy/foil in the book. But some editor said, "Mostly women read Steampunk. Please add a strong female character who can save Sir Maurice's life." And so some of Bainbridge's exploits were cut, Miss Hobbes was shoehorned in, made to Save Our Hero's Life, and given a ret-con epilogue so that the author could consider her more in the next book.)
Sir Maurice is allegedly an opium eater, but it also seems tacked on to the story after the fact. Something that the author did to Make Maurice Interesting. Mostly he's a perfect specimen of manhood, and a fairly dull one at that. The author has an adolescent man crush on the character, I think. Maurice is always pushing through the pain, fiercely fighting off baddies regardless of the fact that he should be in hospital. He's handsome AND dashing AND rich AND immune to the plague AND a practitioner of the Dark Arts AND a brilliant scholar AND a brilliant fighter AND and and and....
The plot is mangled and laid with red herrings that make no sense, have no bearing on the story, and are wrapped up verbally in a few paragraphs. (The secretary's missing brother is utterly irrelevant, gets only about 10 paragraphs total in the story, and offers no thematic reason to be there. The Dutch cousin is similarly non-sequtorial.)
The best part of the book is the plague. There are zombies ravaging London's underbelly (called "revenants," not zombies) and it seems to be a very casual aside. I loved that! The idea that Victorian London wouldn't really pay any attention to a zombie plague .... fantastic!
Now if only the rest of the book had lived up to that one clever idea.
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 Miss Hobbes is barely a sketch. She does very little and we get almost nothing of her personality (other than the fact that she's swooooooony over Sir Maurice) or her background. The most interesting thing we learn is that she has a sister who can tell the future and is locked in an asylum. The last chapter is, I think, supposed to shed some mysterious light on Miss Hobbes and make us rethink all that's come before, but since she was essentially just arm candy to Sir Maurice, I didn't really give a hoot about the big revelation.
(I almost think that the police chief, Bainbridge, was supposed to be the buddy/foil in the book. But some editor said, "Mostly women read Steampunk. Please add a strong female character who can save Sir Maurice's life." And so some of Bainbridge's exploits were cut, Miss Hobbes was shoehorned in, made to Save Our Hero's Life, and given a ret-con epilogue so that the author could consider her more in the next book.)
Sir Maurice is allegedly an opium eater, but it also seems tacked on to the story after the fact. Something that the author did to Make Maurice Interesting. Mostly he's a perfect specimen of manhood, and a fairly dull one at that. The author has an adolescent man crush on the character, I think. Maurice is always pushing through the pain, fiercely fighting off baddies regardless of the fact that he should be in hospital. He's handsome AND dashing AND rich AND immune to the plague AND a practitioner of the Dark Arts AND a brilliant scholar AND a brilliant fighter AND and and and....
The plot is mangled and laid with red herrings that make no sense, have no bearing on the story, and are wrapped up verbally in a few paragraphs. (The secretary's missing brother is utterly irrelevant, gets only about 10 paragraphs total in the story, and offers no thematic reason to be there. The Dutch cousin is similarly non-sequtorial.)
The best part of the book is the plague. There are zombies ravaging London's underbelly (called "revenants," not zombies) and it seems to be a very casual aside. I loved that! The idea that Victorian London wouldn't really pay any attention to a zombie plague .... fantastic!
Now if only the rest of the book had lived up to that one clever idea.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 17, 2009
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 glowing policeman near the victims. Newbury is investigating one of the strangled victims, when he is sent to investigate the downing of an airship in which 50 passengers are killed. With his trusty assistant Veronica Hobbes, they find that the airship has no pilot. This leads them to investigate the airships makers Chapman and Villiers. It appears that the airship was being piloted by a robot, or automan. Newbury's investigation of the cause of the airship crash and the murders of the people in England is interesting and I think Mann's depiction of Victorian England is spot on with both the style of that era and also with his changes including Queen Victoria who is only alive by the means of an artificial machine to the Fixer, a secret doctor who is fixes Crown Agents who are mangled on the Crown business. Newbury is a complicated character -- both a man of scholarship and of action who fights off some revenants in one scene and has a brawl on top of a moving train in another action filled part of the novel. He has an addiction to laudenum.
Hobbes is no insipid character, a fighter who is not afraid of physical action and has secrets of her own including a sister who has visions, who is locked away in an asylum. Only on the last few pages do we learn about her other job as well.
This novel was a pleasure and I will look forward to more books by Mann involving these two characters.
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 glowing policeman near the victims. Newbury is investigating one of the strangled victims, when he is sent to investigate the downing of an airship in which 50 passengers are killed. With his trusty assistant Veronica Hobbes, they find that the airship has no pilot. This leads them to investigate the airships makers Chapman and Villiers. It appears that the airship was being piloted by a robot, or automan. Newbury's investigation of the cause of the airship crash and the murders of the people in England is interesting and I think Mann's depiction of Victorian England is spot on with both the style of that era and also with his changes including Queen Victoria who is only alive by the means of an artificial machine to the Fixer, a secret doctor who is fixes Crown Agents who are mangled on the Crown business. Newbury is a complicated character -- both a man of scholarship and of action who fights off some revenants in one scene and has a brawl on top of a moving train in another action filled part of the novel. He has an addiction to laudenum.
Hobbes is no insipid character, a fighter who is not afraid of physical action and has secrets of her own including a sister who has visions, who is locked away in an asylum. Only on the last few pages do we learn about her other job as well.
This novel was a pleasure and I will look forward to more books by Mann involving these two characters.
April 26, 2019
3 stars
It 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 were a bit in the gruesome side.
The characters were ok and very British which was ok by me as that's why I picked this one up. It's also got a historical touch with a very teched up Victorian type vibe.
I wanted a bit more from the female characters though and while there were glimpses of some real strong characterisations I wanted a bit more.
The plot was quite good and had lots of suspense. The twists and turns were great too. It's pretty gruesome as well but that's ok and added an interesting element.
Overall I enjoyed it but was left wanting more.
It's a darkish historical crime/detective/spy book with some extra steampunk elements do if that intrigues you then give this a go.
As they are short books I'm hoping the series will really build on this foundation which was solid.
I have a long list of books to read next but I will be picking up the next one of this at some stage.
It 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 were a bit in the gruesome side.
The characters were ok and very British which was ok by me as that's why I picked this one up. It's also got a historical touch with a very teched up Victorian type vibe.
I wanted a bit more from the female characters though and while there were glimpses of some real strong characterisations I wanted a bit more.
The plot was quite good and had lots of suspense. The twists and turns were great too. It's pretty gruesome as well but that's ok and added an interesting element.
Overall I enjoyed it but was left wanting more.
It's a darkish historical crime/detective/spy book with some extra steampunk elements do if that intrigues you then give this a go.
As they are short books I'm hoping the series will really build on this foundation which was solid.
I have a long list of books to read next but I will be picking up the next one of this at some stage.
September 14, 2020
Labs vēsturiskais detektīvs ar steampunk elementiem. Žanra cienītājiem patiks.
June 17, 2010
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 have had a problem with, as long as the author had picked one and stuck with it...). Another thing that jumped out at me from time to time was a perplexing shift of perspective - in one paragraph we hear Newbury's thoughts, and in the next, Hobbes'. If you're going to change up POVs, do it by chapter, or at least section! Anything else leads to headaches for the reader.
I don't need a book to be intellectually stimulating. I do need it to be well-written, and this wasn't. All in all, it wasn't a bad book, but nor was it a great one. The cover art (American version), on the other hand, was stunning.
An afternote: Also, if it is true that the crashed (and flaming) airship was filled with helium and not hydrogen, as another reviewer stated, I might have to take away a star. (At least another book with airships that I disliked had sound research...) I did wonder HOW exactly the airship crashed, since LTA craft tend to keep on floating unless something happens to their gas supply, which as far as we can tell was not the case in this instance. Further and unrelatedly, every time I saw the word "whilst" I made a angry, crazed sort of noise in the back of my throat. I have nothing against the word and have read many books that used it in a way that did not interfere with my reading. This book... was not one of them.
(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 have had a problem with, as long as the author had picked one and stuck with it...). Another thing that jumped out at me from time to time was a perplexing shift of perspective - in one paragraph we hear Newbury's thoughts, and in the next, Hobbes'. If you're going to change up POVs, do it by chapter, or at least section! Anything else leads to headaches for the reader.
I don't need a book to be intellectually stimulating. I do need it to be well-written, and this wasn't. All in all, it wasn't a bad book, but nor was it a great one. The cover art (American version), on the other hand, was stunning.
An afternote: Also, if it is true that the crashed (and flaming) airship was filled with helium and not hydrogen, as another reviewer stated, I might have to take away a star. (At least another book with airships that I disliked had sound research...) I did wonder HOW exactly the airship crashed, since LTA craft tend to keep on floating unless something happens to their gas supply, which as far as we can tell was not the case in this instance. Further and unrelatedly, every time I saw the word "whilst" I made a angry, crazed sort of noise in the back of my throat. I have nothing against the word and have read many books that used it in a way that did not interfere with my reading. This book... was not one of them.
June 27, 2010
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 injured, then stitched up and mended, but still, ya know, injured. Then he ends up doing much derring-do, with constant references to occassional stitches popping - and I was distracted by the whole heroics by the fact that I kept thinking this was a bit beyond the realm of believability.
Then the moment happens where his stitches finally do pop entirely, he as blood streaming down his body - again - and, yet, he still manages to help land the zepplin, half drag an unconscious body to the banks, and only then passes out...
I just couldn't get into the action of it because I kept thinking how absurd it was.
***
I might continue the series. It did have some nice steampunk elements, and the characters were interesting enough - and I'm curious about Amelia and also the little 'twist' at the end. So I guess we'll see.
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 injured, then stitched up and mended, but still, ya know, injured. Then he ends up doing much derring-do, with constant references to occassional stitches popping - and I was distracted by the whole heroics by the fact that I kept thinking this was a bit beyond the realm of believability.
Then the moment happens where his stitches finally do pop entirely, he as blood streaming down his body - again - and, yet, he still manages to help land the zepplin, half drag an unconscious body to the banks, and only then passes out...
I just couldn't get into the action of it because I kept thinking how absurd it was.
***
I might continue the series. It did have some nice steampunk elements, and the characters were interesting enough - and I'm curious about Amelia and also the little 'twist' at the end. So I guess we'll see.
June 21, 2010
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 (especially the recent film) and The League of Extraordinary Gentleman -you’d love this book. A quick, highly entertaining 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 (especially the recent film) and The League of Extraordinary Gentleman -you’d love this book. A quick, highly entertaining read.
March 7, 2020
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, with the world building being more of the focus in the early chapters although we do find out quite soon that Newbury takes of the laudanum at night so he can ease into sleep, free of his demons, whatever they may be….. another fictitious detective I follow who is on the juice!! We know next to nothing of Miss Hobbes except perhaps her fashion sense?
It's the interactions between Newbury & Hobbes that drive the mystery forward as they first investigate a strangler, then a downed airship whilst keeping an eye on a missing persons case that might lead to the zombie plague….. and that’s jus day 1! Its all there & would it surprise this reader if they were somehow all inexplicably linked!!
During their investigations, the world is built around them, nuances released slowly to the reader, other players introduced as they go about their business, very much a slow burn of a read & before you know it you are over half way through the book.
We do at length discover Newbury & Hobbs demons, making them good companions it would seem, they certainly have an “admiration” for each other, as when they are on the job they are a very focused pair but away from it they struggle to keep it all together in their worlds. This admiration does in fact grow to one of more mutual attraction come journey's end.
I’ve certainly read more exciting & far-fetched of the genre but still it’s fairly enjoyable with a 3.5 rating rounded to three stars for this steampunk romp & a series I shall follow.
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, with the world building being more of the focus in the early chapters although we do find out quite soon that Newbury takes of the laudanum at night so he can ease into sleep, free of his demons, whatever they may be….. another fictitious detective I follow who is on the juice!! We know next to nothing of Miss Hobbes except perhaps her fashion sense?
It's the interactions between Newbury & Hobbes that drive the mystery forward as they first investigate a strangler, then a downed airship whilst keeping an eye on a missing persons case that might lead to the zombie plague….. and that’s jus day 1! Its all there & would it surprise this reader if they were somehow all inexplicably linked!!
During their investigations, the world is built around them, nuances released slowly to the reader, other players introduced as they go about their business, very much a slow burn of a read & before you know it you are over half way through the book.
We do at length discover Newbury & Hobbs demons, making them good companions it would seem, they certainly have an “admiration” for each other, as when they are on the job they are a very focused pair but away from it they struggle to keep it all together in their worlds. This admiration does in fact grow to one of more mutual attraction come journey's end.
I’ve certainly read more exciting & far-fetched of the genre but still it’s fairly enjoyable with a 3.5 rating rounded to three stars for this steampunk romp & a series I shall follow.
March 2, 2023
First book of this author I have read. Attending a reading retreat and he will be guest author. Steampunk genre which is a new genre. Not sure if I am a fan but enjoyed the detective 🕵️♀️ line of the story.
January 6, 2009
"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 where lycanthropy is a rampant disease that plagues the dirty whorehouses of Whitechapel, where poltergeist infestations create havoc in old country seats, where cadavers can rise from the dead and where nobody ever goes near the Natural History Museum."
This is the blurb.
This is the first adventure of Sir Maurice Newbury and his assistant Miss Veronica Hobbes.
Sir Maurice is an experienced anthropologist who works for the British Museum. Beside this he is an agent of the Queen. He also supports Scotland Yard.
After an airship crash Sir Maurice gets the order from the Queen to investigate the mysterious circumstances. And there is more work for Sir Maurice and Miss Veronica. Chief Inspector Sir Charles Bainbridge is hunting the "glowing bobby"who kills people around Whitechapel.
First of all this is a steampunk novel. I read several steampunk novels before and to be honest this is a real one.
The style of George Mann is fluent. The english isn't to difficult.
The whole book is a like a movie in your head. You feel surrounded by the fog.
You smell the tea. The automatons are great and also the airships. And not to forget there is also some action inside.
When you start to read you forget the time, just praying one more chapter, one more chapter, ......
If you like mysteries, Victorian Age, London, airships, automatons and steam
then read this book.
In case you never read a steampunk novel before then give this one a try.
If this book can't convince you to read more steampunk then you will never like steampunk.
And some more good things:
THE SHATTERED TEACUP by George Mann
This is a new short story with Newbury and Hobbes.
And you can download it for free as ebook and/or audiobook at
http://www.snowbooks.com/
THE OSIRIS RITUAL by George Mann will be relased in September 2009.
This is the blurb.
This is the first adventure of Sir Maurice Newbury and his assistant Miss Veronica Hobbes.
Sir Maurice is an experienced anthropologist who works for the British Museum. Beside this he is an agent of the Queen. He also supports Scotland Yard.
After an airship crash Sir Maurice gets the order from the Queen to investigate the mysterious circumstances. And there is more work for Sir Maurice and Miss Veronica. Chief Inspector Sir Charles Bainbridge is hunting the "glowing bobby"who kills people around Whitechapel.
First of all this is a steampunk novel. I read several steampunk novels before and to be honest this is a real one.
The style of George Mann is fluent. The english isn't to difficult.
The whole book is a like a movie in your head. You feel surrounded by the fog.
You smell the tea. The automatons are great and also the airships. And not to forget there is also some action inside.
When you start to read you forget the time, just praying one more chapter, one more chapter, ......
If you like mysteries, Victorian Age, London, airships, automatons and steam
then read this book.
In case you never read a steampunk novel before then give this one a try.
If this book can't convince you to read more steampunk then you will never like steampunk.
And some more good things:
THE SHATTERED TEACUP by George Mann
This is a new short story with Newbury and Hobbes.
And you can download it for free as ebook and/or audiobook at
http://www.snowbooks.com/
THE OSIRIS RITUAL by George Mann will be relased in September 2009.
December 13, 2013
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 I don't mean the steampunk stuff. Hiring a young unmarried woman as a detective's assistant? In Victorian London? Without comment? Some extenuating circumstances or alternative history might help, but none are mentioned. Queen Victoria sends a personal note to the protagonist: "It is requested that you abandon all activity and proceed immediately to Finsbury Park. An airship has crashed this morning in suspicious circumstances, and one suspects foul play." This doesn't sound like any Queen Victoria I've ever imagined, or even any Victorian person. It's more like Mission Accomplished. And why is the head of state sending personal instructions to an independent agent? Perhaps the story later explains why these people are acting and talking like characters in a modern TV drama, but I decided not to wait. Possibly I'm being too pedantic and nit-picky ;)
January 28, 2013
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 be wrong - I don't know the guy - but that's the feeling I received. There's plenty of adventure, and violence - but it all seems a little bloodless. The plot structure is a fairly standard mystery.
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 be wrong - I don't know the guy - but that's the feeling I received. There's plenty of adventure, and violence - but it all seems a little bloodless. The plot structure is a fairly standard mystery.
March 24, 2015
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 with a series of ghostly murders and a mystery arc in a steampunk setting. Unfortunately, though, it falls a little flat. It could have been a whirlwind of unpredictable twists, but George Mann’s uninspiring writing leaves you cold at every turn.
The characters are boring and typical. The good guys are Sir Maurice Newbury, a Secret Agent of the crown moonlighting as an academic; his contact in the police, bringing him all sorts of tricky crimes to lend an insight to; and his assistant, Miss Veronica Hobbes, a forward thinking, plucky young lady with a Bit-Of-A-Past. The bad guys are a . All of these characters could turn up in any number of mystery / steampunk / historical dramas and no one would bat an eyelid and they have absolutely no distinguishing features that make them special in this one.
The dialogue is clichéd and stilted, and the plot is advanced by the main characters explaining developments in the mystery to one another. It becomes quite excruciating after a while, but is completely eclipsed by the ridiculousness of the final showdown between the goodies and the baddies. After a series of completely illogical and stupid decisions and is then led offstage (presumably laughing maniacally, or he would have been if I’d written it) by the cops to be hanged.
The plot holes are filled in with quick-dry cement and a couple of sub-plots set up early on, which are so completely irrelevant they seem to serve the sole purpose of proving the author is Totally Capable Of Writing Two Plots At Once, are tied up so neat and tight you almost pity the author the effort it took him.
I’ve read crap books before, and enjoyed them too, and I would have done this one but for one thing: there’s a sexist undercurrent beneath the entire narrative that’s a little bit tricky to ignore once it's hit you over the head with its metaphorical two-by-four.
Veronica Hobbes, lady character extraordinaire, is clearly intended to be an Emma-Peel-a-like (according to a review somewhere else on this page). Whatever the intentions of the author, Veronica Hobbes does not hold a candle to Emma Peel. Emma Peel kicks butt. Veronica Hobbes refrains from kicking butt because she doesn’t think she’ll be strong enough to take on the big, nasty zombies that are coming to hurt little old her. She’s an assistant to a Secret Agent who's investigating some murders and she feels nauseous in the presence of dead bodies: what? When she goes to visit her sister, currently interred in a mental asylum (#BACKSTORY!!!!!1!), the sister nicely manages to completely deflect all conversation away from her internment and back to Veronica’s new job, presumably so poor old George Mann didn’t have to think of a better reason for putting her in there, and makes Veronica blush coyly when she mentions her attractive-but-mysterious boss. Later in the story Veronica catastrophically endangers the Secret Agent’s life by performing an astoundingly moronic act of bravado that he then has to rescue her from even though he nearly had the left half of his body ripped off by zombies earlier. This is completely stupid given all her earlier no-I-will-stay-out-of-danger-because-I-am-a-woman bollocks, but when you discover in the epilogue that .
George Mann clearly intended Veronica Hobbes to be a Strong Woman. She performs every single clichéd act that the fairer / gentler / stupider sex do when they’re proving their worth in a man-led Victorian era novel. She remains calm and stoic in the face of violence, she saves the Secret Agent’s life when he nearly has his arm ripped off by bandaging his wounds with strips torn from his shirt because all women have natural nursing talents deep down just waiting to explode outwards at the world and even though she feels nauseous in the presence of a corpse an entire body's worth of gushing blood doesn't faze her at all. Later, when the Secret Agent fails to turn up to work at the appointed time she goes to his home and saves him from a laudanum overdose all the while keeping it a secret from his straight laced house keeper who is never allowed in his study because he dabbles in the occult and keeps things in jars in there because he is an Interesting Character Who Also Definitely Has A Back Story.
Veronica Hobbes could have been excellent. We know she has forward thinking, liberal ideas, we know she’s an independent spirit, we know she’s capable of looking after herself. Unfortunately we don’t know this because we get to see her doing all these independent things or attending universal suffrage marches or beating the crap out of home invaders, we only know it because the author tells us it is so. The Emma-Peeliness of a character is measured not by what we know the character could do, because the author has told us it’s completely in the character’s repertoire of things-that-they-definitely-do, but by what she actually does in the course of the story, and Veronica Hobbes does nothing because George Mann doesn't give her anything to do.
She is almost given one opportunity given her to prove her worth: she is set upon in her apartment by a grizzly murderer who’s been bumping people off in Whitechapel. Fortunately, in the knickers of time, the Secret Agent and his idiot detective friend show up and blunder in to find her holding the man up with a poker. They both set upon the man, even though Veronica Hobbes clearly tells them everything’s under control and she has him cornered, and the murderer gets away in the confusion. The Secret Agent gives chase for ages even though he had major reconstructive surgery on his entire body yesterday, and he corners the murderer on the roof of a speeding train. The murderer falls off and is lost to the investigation; a rather stupid error from a Secret Agent of the Crown investigating a crime in which the absconded criminal could have been a valuable witness. Then the Secret Agent returns to Miss Hobbes’ house to find her in a swoon in the arms of the detective-friend. Then they all have a cup of tea. What a useless female, eh?
Sir Maurice Newbury, Secret Agent, does everything, including the things that Veronica Hobbes was already doing but he ruins them with his Manly Action-y ways, and Miss Veronica Hobbes, woman, patches up his hurts and makes tea.
No.
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 with a series of ghostly murders and a mystery arc in a steampunk setting. Unfortunately, though, it falls a little flat. It could have been a whirlwind of unpredictable twists, but George Mann’s uninspiring writing leaves you cold at every turn.
The characters are boring and typical. The good guys are Sir Maurice Newbury, a Secret Agent of the crown moonlighting as an academic; his contact in the police, bringing him all sorts of tricky crimes to lend an insight to; and his assistant, Miss Veronica Hobbes, a forward thinking, plucky young lady with a Bit-Of-A-Past. The bad guys are a . All of these characters could turn up in any number of mystery / steampunk / historical dramas and no one would bat an eyelid and they have absolutely no distinguishing features that make them special in this one.
The dialogue is clichéd and stilted, and the plot is advanced by the main characters explaining developments in the mystery to one another. It becomes quite excruciating after a while, but is completely eclipsed by the ridiculousness of the final showdown between the goodies and the baddies. After a series of completely illogical and stupid decisions and is then led offstage (presumably laughing maniacally, or he would have been if I’d written it) by the cops to be hanged.
The plot holes are filled in with quick-dry cement and a couple of sub-plots set up early on, which are so completely irrelevant they seem to serve the sole purpose of proving the author is Totally Capable Of Writing Two Plots At Once, are tied up so neat and tight you almost pity the author the effort it took him.
I’ve read crap books before, and enjoyed them too, and I would have done this one but for one thing: there’s a sexist undercurrent beneath the entire narrative that’s a little bit tricky to ignore once it's hit you over the head with its metaphorical two-by-four.
Veronica Hobbes, lady character extraordinaire, is clearly intended to be an Emma-Peel-a-like (according to a review somewhere else on this page). Whatever the intentions of the author, Veronica Hobbes does not hold a candle to Emma Peel. Emma Peel kicks butt. Veronica Hobbes refrains from kicking butt because she doesn’t think she’ll be strong enough to take on the big, nasty zombies that are coming to hurt little old her. She’s an assistant to a Secret Agent who's investigating some murders and she feels nauseous in the presence of dead bodies: what? When she goes to visit her sister, currently interred in a mental asylum (#BACKSTORY!!!!!1!), the sister nicely manages to completely deflect all conversation away from her internment and back to Veronica’s new job, presumably so poor old George Mann didn’t have to think of a better reason for putting her in there, and makes Veronica blush coyly when she mentions her attractive-but-mysterious boss. Later in the story Veronica catastrophically endangers the Secret Agent’s life by performing an astoundingly moronic act of bravado that he then has to rescue her from even though he nearly had the left half of his body ripped off by zombies earlier. This is completely stupid given all her earlier no-I-will-stay-out-of-danger-because-I-am-a-woman bollocks, but when you discover in the epilogue that .
George Mann clearly intended Veronica Hobbes to be a Strong Woman. She performs every single clichéd act that the fairer / gentler / stupider sex do when they’re proving their worth in a man-led Victorian era novel. She remains calm and stoic in the face of violence, she saves the Secret Agent’s life when he nearly has his arm ripped off by bandaging his wounds with strips torn from his shirt because all women have natural nursing talents deep down just waiting to explode outwards at the world and even though she feels nauseous in the presence of a corpse an entire body's worth of gushing blood doesn't faze her at all. Later, when the Secret Agent fails to turn up to work at the appointed time she goes to his home and saves him from a laudanum overdose all the while keeping it a secret from his straight laced house keeper who is never allowed in his study because he dabbles in the occult and keeps things in jars in there because he is an Interesting Character Who Also Definitely Has A Back Story.
Veronica Hobbes could have been excellent. We know she has forward thinking, liberal ideas, we know she’s an independent spirit, we know she’s capable of looking after herself. Unfortunately we don’t know this because we get to see her doing all these independent things or attending universal suffrage marches or beating the crap out of home invaders, we only know it because the author tells us it is so. The Emma-Peeliness of a character is measured not by what we know the character could do, because the author has told us it’s completely in the character’s repertoire of things-that-they-definitely-do, but by what she actually does in the course of the story, and Veronica Hobbes does nothing because George Mann doesn't give her anything to do.
She is almost given one opportunity given her to prove her worth: she is set upon in her apartment by a grizzly murderer who’s been bumping people off in Whitechapel. Fortunately, in the knickers of time, the Secret Agent and his idiot detective friend show up and blunder in to find her holding the man up with a poker. They both set upon the man, even though Veronica Hobbes clearly tells them everything’s under control and she has him cornered, and the murderer gets away in the confusion. The Secret Agent gives chase for ages even though he had major reconstructive surgery on his entire body yesterday, and he corners the murderer on the roof of a speeding train. The murderer falls off and is lost to the investigation; a rather stupid error from a Secret Agent of the Crown investigating a crime in which the absconded criminal could have been a valuable witness. Then the Secret Agent returns to Miss Hobbes’ house to find her in a swoon in the arms of the detective-friend. Then they all have a cup of tea. What a useless female, eh?
Sir Maurice Newbury, Secret Agent, does everything, including the things that Veronica Hobbes was already doing but he ruins them with his Manly Action-y ways, and Miss Veronica Hobbes, woman, patches up his hurts and makes tea.
No.
November 3, 2024
I read the third in the series, The Immorality Engine, first and enjoyed it so much I decided to read the first book. It's a fun adventure but it was kinda lengthy for what it was in my opinion. There's a lot going on but it did tie everything up all in the end.
The plot is interesting enough and it was a good mystery but wasn't much of a fan of the relationships between characters.
The plot is interesting enough and it was a good mystery but wasn't much of a fan of the relationships between characters.
June 8, 2012
The Affinity Bridge brainstorming session #19
Author 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 this is Stage Wrong? That's not a very auspicious place to brainstorm my new novel.
O'Bare: Desist your fretting; this isn't Stage Wrong, it's Stage Left. Now, speaking of your new novel, what have you got so far?
Author: I'm planning on writing a new Sherlock Holmes novel set at the beginning of the twentieth century.
O'Bare: Okay, but it'll need something to make it unique, there are umpteen Holmes novels out there. What else have you got?
Author: Alright, how about I throw in some zombies? Sure Holmes has dealt with plenty of dead bodies, but no undead bodies, amiright?
O'Bare: Clearly you've not heard of Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula.
Author: Aha… wait, you're not joking?
O'Bare: …
Author: Okay, okay. Steampunk! If the story's set around 1900 then let's toss in some honking great airships and maybe a steam-powered car or two.
O'Bare: No, no. Steampunk fans are a discerning bunch. You can't just glue some gears on it and call it steampunk. Apparently.
Author: Fine, we'll go all out: clockwork automata wandering around London, high-tech steam powered medical devices, and Queen Victoria will be Queen mecha-Victoria, like Kenneth Branagh in Wild Wild West.
O'Bare: I don't know, I still feel like we need more.
Author: How about a gently explored romantic subplot between Holmes and Watson?
O'Bare: You want to write paranormal steampunk Sherlock Holmes slash fiction?
Author: Yes!
O'Bare: Done to death.
Author: Fine, let's forget Sherlock Holmes. What if we replaced Sherlock with an agent of the Queen, à la Mycroft but without the social hang ups? And made him more accepting of the paranormal. But kept the opium habit. And let's change Watson into a plucky female heroine, more keen on social reform for her sex than in the technological reforms going on around her.
O'Bare: You might be on to something there. But with all these genres stacked willy-nilly atop one another, can you really write a decent novel?
Author: Well I may be fond of the occasional jarring simile, and there may be one or two occasions when I commit some fairly heinous acts of telling, not showing. But overall I'd say I'm a capable writer, able to pull a good story out from under the pileup of genres. And the plot itself will be a neat who-dunnit, managing to knit together the paranormal and steampunk aspects of the story quite tidily rather than simply having zombies running around an anachronistic city for no reason other than the hell of it. Overall I'd say it'll be a solid first book in an ongoing series.
O'Bare: …
Author: What?
O'Bare: Was that an attempt to insert an actual book review into this piece of high theatre?
Author: …maybe.
O'Bare: You scoundrel! Come here!
Author: Agh!
Author exits Stage Left, pursued by O'Bare.
Author 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 this is Stage Wrong? That's not a very auspicious place to brainstorm my new novel.
O'Bare: Desist your fretting; this isn't Stage Wrong, it's Stage Left. Now, speaking of your new novel, what have you got so far?
Author: I'm planning on writing a new Sherlock Holmes novel set at the beginning of the twentieth century.
O'Bare: Okay, but it'll need something to make it unique, there are umpteen Holmes novels out there. What else have you got?
Author: Alright, how about I throw in some zombies? Sure Holmes has dealt with plenty of dead bodies, but no undead bodies, amiright?
O'Bare: Clearly you've not heard of Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula.
Author: Aha… wait, you're not joking?
O'Bare: …
Author: Okay, okay. Steampunk! If the story's set around 1900 then let's toss in some honking great airships and maybe a steam-powered car or two.
O'Bare: No, no. Steampunk fans are a discerning bunch. You can't just glue some gears on it and call it steampunk. Apparently.
Author: Fine, we'll go all out: clockwork automata wandering around London, high-tech steam powered medical devices, and Queen Victoria will be Queen mecha-Victoria, like Kenneth Branagh in Wild Wild West.
O'Bare: I don't know, I still feel like we need more.
Author: How about a gently explored romantic subplot between Holmes and Watson?
O'Bare: You want to write paranormal steampunk Sherlock Holmes slash fiction?
Author: Yes!
O'Bare: Done to death.
Author: Fine, let's forget Sherlock Holmes. What if we replaced Sherlock with an agent of the Queen, à la Mycroft but without the social hang ups? And made him more accepting of the paranormal. But kept the opium habit. And let's change Watson into a plucky female heroine, more keen on social reform for her sex than in the technological reforms going on around her.
O'Bare: You might be on to something there. But with all these genres stacked willy-nilly atop one another, can you really write a decent novel?
Author: Well I may be fond of the occasional jarring simile, and there may be one or two occasions when I commit some fairly heinous acts of telling, not showing. But overall I'd say I'm a capable writer, able to pull a good story out from under the pileup of genres. And the plot itself will be a neat who-dunnit, managing to knit together the paranormal and steampunk aspects of the story quite tidily rather than simply having zombies running around an anachronistic city for no reason other than the hell of it. Overall I'd say it'll be a solid first book in an ongoing series.
O'Bare: …
Author: What?
O'Bare: Was that an attempt to insert an actual book review into this piece of high theatre?
Author: …maybe.
O'Bare: You scoundrel! Come here!
Author: Agh!
Author exits Stage Left, pursued by O'Bare.
July 22, 2010
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 interesting. In fact, I could easily picture this being made into a movie, and I would enjoy that movie 1,000 times more than I enjoyed this book. It was almost like Mann was writing the movie that was in his head, but he forgot to put in the imagery that would translate it for the rest of us.
The characters are actually somewhat interesting, but without that 'visual' reference, I felt kind of adrift and had to concentrate REALLY hard to figure out what was going on. Maybe that's just my issue, but I kind of think I'm right. And it's the first of the series, so there's a distinct possibility that the two main characters will become romantically involved (if 'distinct possibility' in this case means 'obvious future development'), so if that's your thing, too, then check this junk out.
Anyway, like I said: zombies, robots, airships. You get the idea.
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 interesting. In fact, I could easily picture this being made into a movie, and I would enjoy that movie 1,000 times more than I enjoyed this book. It was almost like Mann was writing the movie that was in his head, but he forgot to put in the imagery that would translate it for the rest of us.
The characters are actually somewhat interesting, but without that 'visual' reference, I felt kind of adrift and had to concentrate REALLY hard to figure out what was going on. Maybe that's just my issue, but I kind of think I'm right. And it's the first of the series, so there's a distinct possibility that the two main characters will become romantically involved (if 'distinct possibility' in this case means 'obvious future development'), so if that's your thing, too, then check this junk out.
Anyway, like I said: zombies, robots, airships. You get the idea.
February 6, 2011
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 suspicious crash of the airship 'The Lady Armitage'. Meanwhile a series of murders is taking place in the slums of the city with reports of a mysterious 'glowing policeman'. Even more sinister are the 'revenants' who are the victims of a plague who have become dangerous unstoppable, unworldly creatures.
Miss Veronica Hobbes turns out to be the most interesting character who works with Newbury in The British Museum by day but is not easily put off by the victims she sees on their investigations of the airship crash. She helps Newbury in their dangerous encounters and also helps Newbury save himself from the temptation of laudanum. This is the first book in the Newbury and Hobbes investigations and is an enjoyable read.
Miss Veronica Hobbes turns out to be the most interesting character who works with Newbury in The British Museum by day but is not easily put off by the victims she sees on their investigations of the airship crash. She helps Newbury in their dangerous encounters and also helps Newbury save himself from the temptation of laudanum. This is the first book in the Newbury and Hobbes investigations and is an enjoyable read.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 28, 2016
At first I thought I liked it less because I was comparing it to The Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences series, which is definitely not fair. After reading the four books published by the time I am writing this (second take), I now know this series is way darker, albeit slower in the beginning. So, I wasn't sure how to rate it at first.
There are two cases which are not connected at first. I don't think it's a spoiler to say they are. The first: someone is killing poor people and there are rumours that it's a ghost of a murdered policeman. The second case is an airship crash. By the end you are hooked.
The epilogue was great and promising.
There are two cases which are not connected at first. I don't think it's a spoiler to say they are. The first: someone is killing poor people and there are rumours that it's a ghost of a murdered policeman. The second case is an airship crash. By the end you are hooked.
The epilogue was great and promising.
October 1, 2009
I'm a huge steampunk fan and was disappointed in this book- if the writing had been as good as the cover, which was intricate and embossed, they might of had something. The writing was mediocre, the characters flat and generic. I couldn't have cared less about the story and had to force myself to finish it. It was obviously the set-up for another run of the mill, themeless series. I will not read the next book. Would have given it one star, but there were some decent ideas. I'm just glad it's over.
July 23, 2015
I am not a big fan of the "steam punk" genre as most of the previous examples that I have read were a little over-the-top. Mann, though, seemed more reserved in "The Affinity Bridge" and put together a very nice Victorian mystery with a sci-fi feel.
The story line was a bit predictable but still made for a fun read.
Mann sets up the series in the epilogue with a nice twist.
This is going to be an entertaining series.
4 STARS
The story line was a bit predictable but still made for a fun read.
Mann sets up the series in the epilogue with a nice twist.
This is going to be an entertaining series.
4 STARS
January 4, 2015
I enjoyed it. I guess reading steampunk is my version of fluffy reading. It has all the usual steampunk elements, likeable main characters, & a few gross (to me) zombie-type scenes. I'm not much of a reader of series books, but I could see myself picking up & enjoying the next book in the series at some point. Relatively entertaining fluff.
November 14, 2014
Good action packed mystery, reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes, but set in a steampunk version of the Victorian era. The story is not always very believable, but I had some fun with it.
3,5 stars.
3,5 stars.
July 24, 2019
Inhalt: Im London zur Zeit von Queen Victoria stürzt ein Luftschiff ab - niemand hat überlebt. Zombies holen sich im Nebel immer neue Opfer und ein blauglühender Polizist erwürgt Menschen. Wenn jemand die Morde klären kann, so ist dies Sir Maurice Newbury, Sonderermittler der Königin und seine clevere Assistentin Veronica Hobbes.
Art des Buches: Steampunk Krimi
Wie fand ich das Buch? Das Buch war spannend und die Charaktere sehr interessant. Ich mochte es, dass sehr geschickt auch die Thematik von Robotern, hier Automaten, mit ihren Auswirkungen auf die Gesellschaft eingeflochten wurde. Das Ermittlerduo Newbury und Hobbes wuchs mir schnell ans Herz und ich hoffe doch sehr, dass sich daraus mit nächsten Teil noch eine Liebesgeschichte entwickelt. Gerade Newsbury ist nicht der Typ Superheld, sondern er hat auch seine Schwächen, was ihn mir sehr sympathisch macht. Ich fand auch die Atmosphäre des nebligen Londons und jetzt mit Steampunk aufgepeppten Welt sehr ansprechend.
Gab es etwas zum Nachdenken und/oder Nachforschen? Eher weniger, allerdings habe ich mir noch einmal angesehen, woraus Laudanum bestand.
3 passende Wörter zum Buch? Steampunk - Zombies - Roboter
Wem empfehlen? Jeder der gerne Steampunk liest oder gerne in die Zeiten des alten Londons reist und sich nicht scheut auf Zombies und andere Schrecken zu treffen, die in den Nebeln lauern.
Art des Buches: Steampunk Krimi
Wie fand ich das Buch? Das Buch war spannend und die Charaktere sehr interessant. Ich mochte es, dass sehr geschickt auch die Thematik von Robotern, hier Automaten, mit ihren Auswirkungen auf die Gesellschaft eingeflochten wurde. Das Ermittlerduo Newbury und Hobbes wuchs mir schnell ans Herz und ich hoffe doch sehr, dass sich daraus mit nächsten Teil noch eine Liebesgeschichte entwickelt. Gerade Newsbury ist nicht der Typ Superheld, sondern er hat auch seine Schwächen, was ihn mir sehr sympathisch macht. Ich fand auch die Atmosphäre des nebligen Londons und jetzt mit Steampunk aufgepeppten Welt sehr ansprechend.
Gab es etwas zum Nachdenken und/oder Nachforschen? Eher weniger, allerdings habe ich mir noch einmal angesehen, woraus Laudanum bestand.
3 passende Wörter zum Buch? Steampunk - Zombies - Roboter
Wem empfehlen? Jeder der gerne Steampunk liest oder gerne in die Zeiten des alten Londons reist und sich nicht scheut auf Zombies und andere Schrecken zu treffen, die in den Nebeln lauern.
March 26, 2020
I was in the mood for some steampunk, so I picked up George Mann's The Affinity Bridge. I was not a particular fan of The Will of the Dead, Mann's Sherlock Holmes pastiche and make no mistake Bridge is not a perfect book either. However it is vastly entertaining, and there is even a nice twist at the end I did not see coming (!) which delighted me. I think this series has potential and am looking forward to reading more. I will take a moment to discuss (in sufficiently general terms) why I could not give this book five stars. There are moments in which our investigators (Newbury and Hobbes) are presented with what might be termed vital clues. Their response, essentially, is "ok long day we will pick this up tomorrow." I found this casual attitude to be teeth-grindingly annoying. Hopefully this trend will prove not to be a trend at all.
January 27, 2024
3,5* maybe
Gerade die letzten 200 Seiten nehmen dann richtig Fahrt auf, bis zu diesem Punkt wird die Geschichte hier relativ langsam aufgebaut.
Schreibstil ist sehr einfach gehalten und die Dialoge fühlen sich sehr gestelzt an. Vllt aber auch für das Setting 1901 passend …
Es gibt sehr viele Dinge, die an einen anderen Detektiv erinnern … es fehlt eigentl. nur noch die Violine
Das Steampunk Element lese ich nicht oft, und ist mir manchmal auch zu weit hergeholt.
Die sich vllt anbahnende Romanze mag ich nicht. Auch wenn sie eine toughe Frau in den ersten Jahren im 20igsten Jahrhundert ist, stellt der Altersunterschied für mich eine zu große Machtposition dar.
Gerade die letzten 200 Seiten nehmen dann richtig Fahrt auf, bis zu diesem Punkt wird die Geschichte hier relativ langsam aufgebaut.
Schreibstil ist sehr einfach gehalten und die Dialoge fühlen sich sehr gestelzt an. Vllt aber auch für das Setting 1901 passend …
Es gibt sehr viele Dinge, die an einen anderen Detektiv erinnern … es fehlt eigentl. nur noch die Violine
Das Steampunk Element lese ich nicht oft, und ist mir manchmal auch zu weit hergeholt.
Die sich vllt anbahnende Romanze mag ich nicht. Auch wenn sie eine toughe Frau in den ersten Jahren im 20igsten Jahrhundert ist, stellt der Altersunterschied für mich eine zu große Machtposition dar.
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