Another Look at Steampunk Tales #1

Artist Melita "missmonster" Curphy

The Speculative Society Book Club’s first selection is Steampunk Tales #1, an anthology of ten stories published by Steampulp Publishing LLC.  I must admit if this wasn’t our book club choice, I doubt if I would have bothered with it. 

When confronted with an unknown book, I usually look at three things to decide whether to read or not to read.  I mean if I’m going get cozy on the sofa with a stranger, the unknown book, I want to be darn sure it’s going to be a worth the time. 

So, first thing I look at is the cover.  Okay, bad me.  I do judge a book by it’s cover.  For the cover of Steampunk Tales #1, I give it a five out of a ten.  The artwork is good but the concept screams, predictable.  Girl, googles, gloves, scarf, gun, and dirigibles. 

Second, I look at the blurp.  This is the description on Amazon.  “Emulating the style of the pulp adventure magazines of the 1920s and '30s, Steampunk Tales contains first-run, original fiction written by an A+ list of award-winning authors. Issue #1 contains 10 stories, each running between 4,300 to 11,000 words, for an unbelievable price. Authors contributing to issue #1 include Jay Lake, Catherynne M. Valente, SatyrPhil Brucato and G.D. Falksen. The cover art was painted by popular artist Melita "missmonster" Curphy.”   Nothing in that pushed any of my buttons and enticed me to read on.    

But I did.  I read the first tale called Project Mobius-5 by K. E. Kendall.  How many times have you heard how important the first paragraph, the first five pages, the first chapter are to keep the reader reading?   I think this bit of advice was lost somewhere in the time continuum and I stopped reading.  

There might have been better stories to read in the anthology but not by me.  After all, time is precious, so when I spend time with a book I want to feel like I’m walking with a friend down an unfamiliar road.  

Till next time,

Elizabeth

For a Rollicking Good Time...Agatha H!

It's been a bit stressful around here.  I sprained my ankle a few days before undergoing oral surgery.  It's ok!  It all worked out. Pain meds covered both incidents nicely (over-the-counter? Even better!) So, needed to recover. Needed to sit around with my foot up and just relax. For that I needed a story or several.

Enter the Kindle.

I use its text-to-speech function: the computer voice isn't that bad. Sounds like someone with a strange accent, but after a few pages I had the "accent" figured out.

I went through my Steampunk list of books. I've got a good collection.  A couple of them I got on Audible. Bacigalupi's Windup Girl, for one.  Link and Grant's Steampunk! anthology, for another.  I've finished the Anthology.  The Goodreads group read, Steampunk Tales is done, too.  Windup Girl is a little to involved for post-anesthesia listening.  So, what's left?

The Steampunk Detective by Darrell Pitt worked nicely.  As did Ekaterina Sedia's Alchemy of Stone.  Sill stressed out by physical and now family stuff, I needed still more distraction. Enter Agatha! Agatha H and the Airship City.

At first I was getting lost. Too many characters, no airship city, Agatha being a bit too ditzy for me. At first.  She was interesting enough for me to stick with her, though.  Which turned out to be the best thing.

OK, still too many characters.  They were a bit hard to keep up with.  It's a sprawling novel for taking place in so small a space. That was when I realized where I'd got the book.  It's a novel written around the characters created by the Foglios, Phil and Kaja, the creators of the exceptionally successful Girl Genius web comic.

Yup, I finally caught up with the rest of the internet!  Not with the comic, though.  The graphic style puts me off.  I'm old school and prefer the old rough, pulp look to the new, slick, computer-drawn one.  Fortunately, the novel takes me into the world of Agatha and her cronies. Fortunately also, there is another novel just released from Night Shade books!

So, another novel works its way through my Kindle.  I fell asleep before the end and woke up in the middle of an exciting bit.  Wait! Wait! What happened?  Yeah, rollicking adventure.  I'd fallen in love with the characters and their weird world. Even enough to pick up the Omnibus and enjoy the comic.  Meanwhile, gotta get back to Agatha. I left her alone in her lab with some guy. The cat didn't like him, so I gotta wonder...Should I trust the cat?