Richard's Reviews > Infernal devices: A mad Victorian fantasy

A lot of imagination went into this book, but not enough discipline or storytelling craft. For the majority of the book, the author shoves the first-person narrator through inexplicable and astonishing events, and then crams their eventual denouement into a few pages via telling instead of showing, when other characters explain to our befuddled protagonist what was happening.

For most folks, that would probably be enough to shove this down to a one- or two-star rating, but I'm more generous. What really irked me about this book was the complete disdain for the laws of physics. Steampunk is, ideally, a subgenre of science fiction, which means it is supposed to show respect for as much of science as is possible within the bounds of the story. Want time travel? Faster than light travel? Or maybe teleporting "transporters"? Sure; but choose what you're going to mangle and keep it to a minimum. Steampunk in general doesn't deal well with this kind of parsimony, and this one is worse than most.

And how can you have a Victorian England steampunk story that appears to be completely missing railroads?!?

This is pretty vintage for steampunk — in fact, the author gets credit for inventing the term, however, since it was published in 1987. I found the couple that was from the future (kind of) quite entertaining, although the explanation of their origins (another of those annoying "tellings") was disappointing.

Recommended only for steampunk completists. Sorry.

(This was the book of the month for the SciFi and Fantasy Reading Group for April 2013. It was discussed here).
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