Jonathan L Howard’s second novel featuring the necromancer Johannes Cabal is set in a steampunk world. One of the things I really like about this series is that each novel is set and told in a different style, like Ray Bradbury (novel 1-Johannes Cabal the Necromancer) and HP Lovecraft (novel 3-The Fear Institute). The novel opens with Cabal unsuccessfully trying to steal a rare book containing secrets of necromancy. He manages to escape by infuriating and dueling his interrogator, then steals the identity of a […]
What Happens When I Walk Into a Used Bookstore
I was in a used bookstore and I randomly picked up Murder on the Prowl. I was expecting something like Lillian Jackson Braun’s The Cat Who series, which I loved. Boy was I wrong. The similarities are a rather cranky-snarky protagonist with a powerful independence streak who encounters a lot of murders and ends up solving them with some help from friends and pets. The differences are many, but this isn’t bad. First of all, the main character is the postmistress Harry Haristeen (female) and […]
The Victorian Art of Blowing Stuff Up with Braun and Books
I seem to have been on a real fantasy/steampunk kick lately. Phoenix Rising is by far the most steampunky thing I’ve read lately. The story centers on two agents of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences, Eliza D. Braun and Wellington Books. Eliza is enamored of dynamite, guns, and action, while her new partner is a by-the-book Archivist. Their last names are not coincidental. The two are forced to work together, and quickly discover a mystery in the Archives’ unsolved case files that has connections to […]
The Magical Girl Goes Abroad
This second volume follows the continuing adventures of Jane and Vincent as they embark on their honeymoon to Belgium to visit a glamourist friend of Vincent’s. While there, news arrives that Napoleon has returned from exile; Jane and Vincent are faced with the problem of how to get back to England safely. Glamour in Glass is a lot less Austen-esque then Shades of Milk and Honey, and also far more serious. Imminent war takes over the second half of the story, and there is more […]
Glamming up Austen
For the record, I enjoyed this book and plan to read the rest of the series. For all its promise and the glowing reviews and recommendations, I was expecting a lot more. The comparison to Jane Austen is apt, and there are pretty clear references to several of her novels in the characters and plot. The addition of glamour magic as an everyday social skill provides a way to make the old Austen formulas new and interesting. The story follows Jane Ellsworth who is well […]
Time of the Living Gargoyles
I picked this up as a light read and it is, but it’s entertaining. Zoe Faust, the heroine, is an herbalist and runs an online shop, who just wants to settle into her new fixer-upper home in Portland, Oregon. Zoe encounters a few problems. First, there is the living stone gargoyle Dorian Robert-Houdin who has stowed away in her things because he needs her help translating an old alchemical text in order to save his life. It turns out Zoe is several centuries old, having […]