THE BULLET-CATCHER'S DAUGHTER, Author Rod Duncan's "Gas-Lit Empire" starts its fall

THE BULLET-CATCHER'S DAUGHTER The Fall of the Gas-Lit Empire, Book 1
ROD DUNCAN
Angry Robot Books
$7.99 mass market paper, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Elizabeth Barnabus lives a double life—as herself and as her brother, the private detective. She is trying to solve the mystery of a disappearing aristocrat and a hoard of arcane machines. In her way stand the rogues, freaks and self-proclaimed alchemists of a travelling circus.

But when she comes up against an agent of the all-powerful Patent Office, her life and the course of history will begin to change. And not necessarily for the better…

THE FALL OF THE GAS-LIT EMPIRE SERIES
UNSEEMLY SCIENCE—THE CUSTODIAN OF MARVELS

My Review: Fantasy novel. Four-and-a-half stars. Why are you still staring at this screen? Click over to Amazon or whichever bookery you patronize and order one. It is a Moral Imperative. Seriously.

1/19/16: A few private messages suggested I expand on my exhortation. Okay, here goes: Any writer who can, WITHOUT infodumping, bring me directly into a fantastical and outrageously unlikely alternate steampunk world earned your scarce book-buying dollars. He made me *believe* that, in an illusory world, illusionists could be so important and so vital that the law enforcement agency of the whole world will hunt them down and imprison them. He gave such reality to the conundrum of how to simply exist as a woman in the world he's made that I was wincing, squirming, and blushing for the privilege that being male has always brought.

Please believe me...this is powerful storytelling talent working so smoothly you can't feel the strain. I loved the first book, and am 50pp into the second. This is the shazizzle, as we used to say years ago. Not least for the cross-dressing hero/ine...and surprisingly, to my untrusting soul, the mystery was actually very involving as well. To my surprise, the deus-ex-machina syndrome I was fully prepared to Loftily Ignore wasn't there! Author Duncan played pretty much straight with his readers. I like that a lot.

I'm also duty-bound to reveal that Author Duncan is a social media acquaintance of mine as a result of my fanboying about these books. He takes beautiful photographs as well as writing lovely fiction. Howsomever, I read and reviewed the books before I found all that out.