Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Behemoth 


More steampunk fun.  Imagine WWI starting in a world with gene-tinkering "Darwinists" who fabricate animals and plants for technology (a whale/blimp airship?  flechette bats?) against steam powered "Clankers" with walking war machines and Tesla cannons.    One more volume on the way... I just wish it wasn't a year away....

Scott Westerfeld (Author), Keith Thompson (Illustrator)
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The behemoth is the fiercest creature in the British navy. It can swallow enemy battleships with one bite. The Darwinists will need it, now that they are at war with the Clanker powers.
Deryn is a girl posing as a boy in the British Air Service, and Alek is the heir to an empire posing as a commoner. Finally together aboard the airship Leviathan, they hope to bring the war to a halt. But when disaster strikes the Leviathan's peacekeeping mission, they find themselves alone and hunted in enemy territory.
Alek and Deryn will need great skill, new allies, and brave hearts to face what's ahead.

posted by Joel at 12:14 PM

More Steampunk!


Clementine

Cherie Priest (Author)
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More fun, in the Clockwork Century created by Cherie Priest.  The Civil War ISN'T over and steam powered airships ply the skies - lots of fun!


Maria Isabella Boyd's success as a Confederate spy has made her too famous for further espionage work, and now her employment options are slim. Exiled, widowed, and on the brink of poverty...she reluctantly goes to work for the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in Chicago.

Adding insult to injury, her first big assignment is commissioned by the Union Army. In short, a federally sponsored transport dirigible is being violently pursued across the Rockies and Uncle Sam isn't pleased. The Clementine is carrying a top secret load of military essentials--essentials which must be delivered to Louisville, Kentucky, without delay.

Intelligence suggests that the unrelenting pursuer is a runaway slave who's been wanted by authorities on both sides of the Mason-Dixon for fifteen years. In that time, Captain Croggon Beauregard Hainey has felonied his way back and forth across the continent, leaving a trail of broken banks, stolen war machines, and illegally distributed weaponry from sea to shining sea.

And now it s Maria's job to go get him.

He's dangerous quarry and she's a dangerous woman, but when forces conspire against them both, they take a chance and form an alliance. She joins his crew, and he uses her connections. She follows his orders. He takes her advice.

And somebody, somewhere, is going to rue the day he crossed either one of them.

posted by Joel at 12:09 PM

Catching Up - So many books...

I've REALLY been up in the air!

 

This is a terrific YA series, a bit in the steampunk alternate-past vein.  A lovely set of adventures that reimagine air travel and more.  Airships, high altitude life forms, space elevators - a really rich mix of SF concepts with an interesting set of characters.  I sure hope Oppel comes back to the series in the future!
Airborn is a 2004 young adult novel by Kenneth Oppel. The book has been honored by several awards including winning Canada's Governor General's Award. Airborn is set in a time where the primary form of air transportation are airships. The technological advancements in the story appear to depict a world similar to that of the 1930s or 1940s, but the airplane has not been invented and the Earth contains fictional flying creatures that inhabit the sky, which suggests that the book takes place in an imaginary time period or an alternate reality. The book takes place aboard a transoceanic airship, the Aurora, and is told through the perspective of its cabin boy, Matt Cruse. The third book in the series, Starclimber alludes to the series taking place somewhere before or after World War I as there are references to arch duke Franz Ferdinand as well as women's suffrage. (wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborn)

Airborn

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Skybreaker

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Starclimber 

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posted by Joel at 10:50 AM