THE QUEEN OF ALL CROWS, best steampunky fantasy in a line of them by Rod Duncan

THE QUEEN OF ALL CROWS
ROD DUNCAN (The Map of Unknown Things #1)
Angry Robot Books
$6.99 ebook platforms, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: Only one woman can stop the world from descending into endless war, in this thrilling return to the world of the Gas-Lit Empire

The year is 2012. The nations of the world are bound together in an alliance of collective security, overseen by the International Patent Office, and its ruthless stranglehold on technology.

When airships start disappearing in the middle of the Atlantic, the Patent Office is desperate to discover what has happened. Forbidden to operate beyond the territorial waters of member nations, they send spies to investigate in secret.

One of those spies is Elizabeth Barnabus. She must overcome her dislike of the controlling Patent Office, disguise herself as a man, and take to the sea in search of the floating nation of pirates who threaten the world order.

THE PUBLISHER SENT ME A REVIEW COPY. THANK YOU.

My Review: It is not necessary to read the first trilogy featuring Elizabeth Barnabus to appreciate this novel. It would add incalculably to your pleasure in the read, but it isn't necessary.

The plot picks up where The Custodian of Marvels leaves off. Julia has vanished after embarking for America, there to join her hard-won happiness with husband Richard in his law firm's Patent-law practice there. Julia will make herself a new life by studying Patent law at Columbia University. All of that struggle and fight is now gone for naught with her airship's disappearance. Her bestie and earliest supporter Elizabeth is on the hunt for her at great personal cost. It seems, as of now, that Elizabeth's main supporter and illicit lover, John Farthing, has lost her via her betrayal of his trust as well as her disappearance.

For someone who picked this book up because of its terrific cover art, this should be enough: the friendship between the women is explicitly made the stakes of the story within two chapters. Possibly the most intriguing idea in the series is the existence of the International Patent Office. Those who have read The Fall of the Gas-Lit Empire may read the spoiler below:
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Elizabeth's journey from Patent-Office battling terrorist to one of their own is a delightful part of that series's arc, and the basis for this series's stories. In these tales we will follow the intrepid, genderfluid Elizabeth as she resumes her part-time identity as her own brother in service of, not in fleeing from, her former enemy-turned-employer the Patent Office. That by itself would make this an astounding series to follow. But the stakes are far greater than merely serving those that Barnabus once despised. Mr. Barnabus is outed as Miss Barnabus memorably and completely for the duration of this book's search for Julia when we discover the truth of a tall tale of sea monsters eating ships.

The action of the story is set largely among the all-female pirate society, the Sargassans, operating in the North Atlantic Gyre. It's a world constructed around the Unicorn, which name made me snigger as I realized it was chosen to be the center of an all-female society. But I show my juvenile sense of humor. The novella-length time we're aboard the constructed world of the Sargassans is spent politicking and coping with human nature's ickier corners. Women, it turns out, do much as men do when left to rule themselves. I wonder if this is, in fact, true; I don't know how much of the world is based on women being women and how much on women reacting to the male-dominated world they hated enough to run away from. I suspect the truth is the latter by Author Duncan's design.

Now the design itself becomes an issue. This is the first book of a trilogy, whose second book has only recently appeared. The ending of this book's two-fold story is complete only on one strand, and that dangling second strand is going to itch and niggle the entire time we're embarked on a new quest in Elizabeth's emotionally battered and physically exhausted condition. The ending of The Queen of All Crows will not resolve the Barnabus case internal to the International Patent Office. It is clear that echoes of "O brave new world..." in the ending are not accidental. And with it, the opening of vast new vistas and fresh perspectives on the Gas-Lit Empire.

Because the action of this book, airship crashes and pirate republics and long sea voyages, all takes place in 2012.

THE CUSTODIAN OF MARVELS by Rod Duncan: Excellent. That's all, just excellent.

THE CUSTODIAN OF MARVELS
ROD DUNCAN
Angry Robot
$7.99 mass market, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: You’d have to be mad to steal from the feared International Patent Office. But that’s what Elizabeth Barnabus is about to try. A one-time enemy from the circus has persuaded her to attempt a heist that will be the ultimate conjuring trick.

Hidden in the vaults of the Patent Court in London lie secrets that could shake the very pillars of the Gas-Lit Empire. All that stands in Elizabeth’s way are the agents of the Patent Office, a Duke’s private army and the mysterious Custodian of Marvels.

Rod Duncan returns with the climactic volume of the Fall of the Gas-Lit Empire, the breathtaking alternate history series that began with the Philip K Dick Award-nominated The Bullet-Catcher’s Daughter.

THE FALL OF THE GAS-LIT EMPIRE SERIES
THE BULLET-CATCHER'S DAUGHTER—UNSEEMLY SCIENCE

My Review: If I did not already have information to the effect that this volume merely concludes the first series of books about the Gas-Lit Empire, I would even now be stowing away on a container ship bound for the UK with murder in my heart and author Duncan in my sights.

As things stand, I am thrilled by the ending of the book...by the entire last third, in fact...and the justice meted out therein. It's no secret from my earlier reviews that this is a series I've completely given myself over to. I have a suspicion that this is due to the talents of Mr. Duncan in applying his professional knowledge of science and computing to create a plausible explanation for this amazing world and its terrific characters. In previous reviews, I've described the point of departure for the series as unlikely in the extreme. I only now, at the very end of the third book in the trilogy, understand why this particular point of departure from the world we inhabit was chosen. In fact, it couldn't have worked in any other way. I will not spoiler this for anyone else, but keep the origins of the Gas-Lit Empire in your mind throughout the book and you'll be given an even richer reading experience than you'd have any other way.

I've got quibbles, of course, I'm a reader with thousands of books under my belt so it would be improbable for me not to have. I wonder how Miss Elizabeth Barnabus came to the final conclusion she did during the heist at the end of the book in such a hurry. But honestly, any quibble I have is more akin to brushing my husband's coat on his way out the door than to yanking at cards in a house of cards. Specks, mere specks, nothing more.

If it isn't crystal-clear from the foregoing, I am urging with great certainty and compulsion that you go forth on the instant and order whichever of these books you haven't yet read. If you haven't read any, buy the series in bulk. I waited an agonizing year before getting my copy of THE CUSTODIAN OF MARVELS, and I don't want others to suffer as I have done.

UNSEEMLY SCIENCE, second in Rod Duncan's Fall of the Gas-Lit Empire books, is unseemly...in a good way

UNSEEMLY SCIENCE
ROD DUNCAN
Angry Robot Books
$7.99 mass market, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In the divided land of England, Elizabeth Barnabus has been living a double life - as both herself and as her brother, the private detective. Witnessing the hanging of Alice Carter, the false duchess, Elizabeth resolves to throw the Bullet Catcher’s Handbook into the fire, and forget her past. If only it were that easy!

There is a new charitable organisation in town, run by some highly respectable women. But something doesn’t feel right to Elizabeth. Perhaps it is time for her fictional brother to come out of retirement for one last case…? Her unstoppable curiosity leads her to a dark world of body-snatching, unseemly experimentation, politics and scandal. Never was it harder for a woman in a man’s world…

THE FALL OF THE GAS-LIT EMPIRE SERIES
THE BULLET-CATCHER'S DAUGHTER—THE CUSTODIAN OF MARVELS

My Review: I really liked the first book in this series, THE BULLET-CATCHER'S DAUGHTER. But you knew that already, right? Since you read my reviews regularly, right?

We're going up a half-star on this second entry in the series because I really, REALLY liked it. There are some odd pleasures to be had in watching Virtue and Propriety subverted from within and with the collusion of the seemingly virtuous. Schadenfreude, anyone? This story takes Schadenfreude to new heights as Elizabeth must, reluctantly, solve a mystery for her bosom friend Julia; protect her nearest and dearest from several groups of malefactors that she doesn't know, as well as elude the vile Duke of Northampton's hired thugs trying to return her to his...service, to euphemize, for the vast sum of 400 guineas. So you know that we're on a rollercoaster as men, women, children of all ages and stations try to get their hooks into Elizabeth, driving her into reckless (though never careless) action.

As soon as Elizabeth believes she has a moment's breathing space, her coterie of enemies and friends set her spinning in yet another direction. One serious enemy, the International Patent Office, plays a smaller role in this book than the first entry; John Farthing the Patent Officer plays a surprising role, considering how they met.

As the story rockets along, shedding layers of illusion and bringing Elizabeth closer and closer to horrible and unpunishable crimes commited in the name of Seemly Science, the urge to sleep was banished and my meals became snack foods until the horrible, chilling denoument. It is Duncan's gift to take this unlikely point of departure and people it with characters whose existence comes to matter a lot to the reader. The world he has created is such an exuberant, lively, richly detailed place, and peopled with such wonderful people, and so much darned fun to enter, how can you resist running directly to the bookery of your choice and buying all three (yes, three!) volumes? Take my word for it, UNSEEMLY SCIENCE is an excellent investment in satisfying your story-hunger.

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.