The night hung in tatters. Gas streetlamps chewed at the darkness. Candles cast dull halos through the dirty windows of the tenements across the street. Heavy purple clouds pumped up from smoke stacks and patterned the sky like ugly patches on a black velvet curtain. A few fireflies blinked from what corners of black velvet curtain. A few fireflies blinked from what corners of blackness remained.
A pair of them invaded the darkness of my rooms. I watched them flicker, darting through their insectile courtship. They swooped past my face, circled, and then alighted inside the fold of my shirtsleeve.
They crept close to on another, brilliant desire flashing through their tiny bodies. Their antennae touched and quivered. The female firefly reached out and stroked the male. He rushed into her embrace. Holding him close, she crushed her powerful mandibles through his head. Their flickering bodies blinked in perfect unison as she devoured him.
Some romances end more badly than others.
Synopsis: Gothic fairytale meets steampunk murder-mystery.
So good. Sooooooo good. About 100 pages in, I realized that this was the book I've been trying to write for the past year and a half. I can hang up my keyboard and move on. It's just so....lovely. The book has two protagonists, one from the dark side and one out to prosecute his kind, and Hale makes both of them incredibly compelling and sympathetic and I would cheerfully sell my soul for more of their story. The world-building--sort of 18th century London or Boston steampunk with a unique class system--is intense, and goes light on the supernatural, which worked for me.
Okay, there was one moment where Belimai Sykes is described as walking into a stiff breeze, stiff enough to make his scarf billow out behind him all Romantic-like while puffing cigarette smoke enough to form a cloud in front of him. Yeah no.
Totally made up for by the fact that the romance is both incredibly poignant and believable and so so hot.
This will definitely be a re-read, and has knocked Scales of Justice off of my list of favorite novels
I genuinely can't say more about this book without ruining several surprises, but really. You should read it.
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Roman -- I'm not sure what Boston steampunk is! I know where Boston is, and I know what punk is, but the steam part totally threw me. (Steam heat, steam engine, steamy romance???)
ReplyDeleteI usually avoid 'bizarre' novels, as the feel forced and unsatisfying to me. But I may try this one out. After I look up steampunk. Is it even in the dictionary?
So, steampunk's a relatively recent literary movement in which the setting of the work has the prior assumption that steampower has replaced electricity for dominance in society (or in some cases electricity was never invented).
ReplyDeleteI find it endlessly fascinating.
Links:
Wikipedia: steampunk
Steampunk Magazine
Enjoy!