The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack

Burton & Swinburne, Book 1

By: Mark Hodder

Narrated by: Gerard Doyle

Length: 14 hrs

Publisher's summary

Sir Richard Francis Burton is an explorer, linguist, scholar, and swordsman. His reputation has been tarnished, his career is in tatters, and his former partner is missing and probably dead. Algernon Charles Swinburne is an unsuccessful poet and follower of de Sade, for whom pain is pleasure and brandy is ruin. They stand at a crossroads in their lives, and are caught in the epicentre of an empire torn by conflicting forces: Engineers transform the landscape with bigger, faster, noisier, and dirtier technological wonders; Eugenicists develop specialist animals to provide unpaid labour; and Libertines oppose repressive laws and demand a society based on beauty and creativity, while the Rakes push the boundaries of human behaviour to the limits with magic, drugs, and anarchy.

The two men are sucked into the perilous depths of this moral and ethical vacuum, when Lord Palmerston commissions Burton to investigate assaults on young women committed by a weird apparition known as Spring Heeled Jack, and to find out why werewolves are terrorizing London's East End. Their investigations lead them to one of the defining events of the age, and the terrifying possibility that the world they inhabit shouldn’t exist at all.

©2010 Mark Hodder (P)2012 Audible Ltd

bloody brilliant

Wow. What a story, what a series!!

Mark Hodder spins a brilliant yarn. He winds real historical characters into a complex evolving steampunk tale of time and fantastic technology in a world where Victoria doesn’t survive an assassins bullet. This is the first book in a series of three and it’s a ride all the way to the finish. Nothing here is obvious and the twists kept me on the edge of my Galaxy S3 until the last paragraph. Get the series and shut yourself away for the weekend.

Great world, dumb characters

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

Not so much.
The world is greatly conceived, the idea of using real-life characters (Victorian explorers, engineers etc.) is fine, the plot is none too shabby (though time travel? again?)... and yet...

Here is the problem.
The characters -- all of them -- are dumb. Stupid. As in, behaving stupidly, making idiotic decisions, not thinking for themselves, playing roles assigned to them by the author.

OK for a teenager fantasy.
For an adult? Not so much.

Who was your favorite character and why?

None of them. See above.

Which character – as performed by Gerard Doyle – was your favorite?

Doyle is OK - not *the* best, but certainly deserves a strong "B".

Do you think The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack needs a follow-up book? Why or why not?

No.
It needs a rewriting.

Any additional comments?

HPMoR. Look it up.

{Spoiler} Good story but somewhat obvious at times

Great setting and very well described. The time-travel idea was pretty obvious from the start. Loved the fact that the bad guys were well known personalities from science.