The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack: Burton & Swinburne, Book 1

Good:
-- a sweeping vision of steampunk fantasy with a whole range of technologies and factions clashing amidst 'stiff upper lip' Victorian England
-- characters are fun and well rounded for this kind of fiction
-- does a surprisingly good job at both tying up the plot lines of this particular story and simultaneously establishing characters and plot lines for the the follow on books
-- good narration

Bad
-- didn't bother me much but it may bother some: this is steampunk fantasy. It's not just an alternate technological development line, it's the 1890s with things that couldn't be done today. In fact some of the tech is probably just impossible, or at least 50 years out from now, but Victorians are being it with wood and brass. If this bothers you, large chunks of this book, especially the last third, will really grate on you
-- similarly, while the coverage of Victorian speech patterns and mannerisms is often a strength of the book, the speechifying in the action sequences (again in the last third) is just ridiculous. It's kind of like professional wrestling where you have to listen to a lot of nonsensical talking to set up a fight and then during the fight people will just stop to talk and showboat for awhile because it fits their character as opposed to making any sense at all.
-- sometimes plot convenience just overtakes common sense even if you suspend disbelief for the steampunk aspects: at one point a character who has been stabbed through both thighs with a spear gets up and outruns healthy Somali warriors. Really? Not just stabbed in one thigh but in both thighs? Really?
-- it's a common failing of action heros in the last twenty years or so, but if you add up the amount of damage the hero takes it's probably enough to kill 3-4 guys and put two more in the hospital

Overall the good stuff was things I like and the bad stuff was the kind of things I can gloss over so it was 4 stars for me but if the you have read any of these bad points and thought to yourself "it makes me nuts when they do that" this will probably be a 2 star or even a 1 star book for you.

For some time I have been looking for a book that could live up to the possibilities presented by the steampunk genre and have largely been disappointed. While books such as Perdido Street station, Terminal World and Boneshaker have all had promise each one has failed to to both convey the technology and culture of a steampunk world while also being a good story in regards to the fundamentals of storytelling such as narrative flow and relatable characters.

The curious case of Spring Heeled Jack however is THE book that steampunks have been looking for and the perfect introduction to those new to the genre. It is both original and historical, filled with fantastic machines and creatures on par with the best alien worlds of fiction. There are characters of surprising depth and exciting action scenes both all set in an alternate "victorian" era. Unlike most alternate history fiction the changes in history here are not merely to suite the authors convenance but are an actual result of the story itself making this not so much an alternative history as it is a time travel epic. It manages to be fanciful without being too bizarre to relate to and unlike many authors of this genre this author remembers that no matter how interesting the world you create may be the characters must be the foundation of the story if we are to care at all about the plot.

The story unfolds first from the perspective of an man hired to investigate some of the stranger happenings in what from our perspective is a radically changed and bizarre world and then later from the point of view of a man from our future trying to deal with his own past and the changes that occurred to the timeline. It is in this second part of the story that this book truly shines when we listen with growing horror and fascination to the sequence of events that have lead to a 19th century england so different from our own.

Any fan of time travel will love this story and the classic paradoxes it copes with as will anyone who has studied the social and scientific changes of the victorian era and wondered, "what if"

At last steampunks have a book they can be proud to recommend as an example of the genre without an excuses or caveats to the fantasy or sci-fi fan.

I like steampunk, I like science fiction, and I like Victorian history, so I should have loved this, but I didn't. There is nothing horribly wrong with book, but there is little particularly wonderful either. Rather than big issues, I found that lots of little choices ultimately undermined the book.

A sense of place is key in these sorts of historical fantasy novels, and while Hodder gets a lot of obvious references in - London smog, classism, formality, and so on - it feels repeatedly undermined by little things. His characters frequently use anachronistic language (I assume "Great Scott!" feels Victorian, but it is of more modern American use, not a big deal in itself, but typical of the sloppiness), characters are drawn with very broad brushes, and London feels like a set of stereotypical Dickensian elements, rather than a coherent whole.

The sense of adventure is similarly undermined by plot choices. The reader is often led to understand certain things hours before the hero does, for no clear purpose. People have a tendency to suddenly declare important clues as characters seem to randomly stumble into key plot points. New technological elements are introduced as needed, without a real consistent sense of what the limits of the "technologists" are. And the main character is constantly referred to by the third person narrator as "The Great Explorer" or "The King's Agent" as in "The Great Explorer said X." None of these are fatal flaws, but, by the end, they weighed the book down too much.

Again, if you really like steampunk fantasy, you could do worse, but otherwise this book is adequate at best.

I had a basic understanding of what steampunk was before I started Spring Heeled Jack, but what I found was a masterful amalgam of historical fiction, fantasy, sci-fi, philosophy, and detective-style mystery. Gerard Doyle does an amazing job jumping between all the different accents of 1860s England, where fights were won with a well-placed right cross and a stinging one-liner. Before listening, you will need to pack a bag for your disbelief and send it on a nice, long vacation (Foul-mouthed messenger parakeets? Check. Packs of hooded werewolves kidnapping chimney sweeps? Double check. Genetically modified and mechanically enhanced historical figures? More checks than you would even believe.).

Gerard Doyle's ability to flawlessly define every character and give them unmistakable personality was a pleasure. The clever story gives steampunk a reason to exist central to the plot and chases it's own tail through all three books!

Richard Francis Burton, the genius adventurer is the picture of the african explorer! He is an honorable man of action!

His characterizations add a dimension to the characters that transcend the written word.

Yes, it was a wonderful epiphany.

This book truly puts the PUNK in Steampunk. It uses the genre as it SHOULD be used, to examine the ethical conflicts inherent in rampant technological progress. Thus making it relevant to the world we live in.

The voices and performance were great. I may be a sucker for the British accent...but really enjoyed it. The story was fast and interesting, but ultimately the pieces didn't fit that smoothly in the end. It also seemed to spin out of control and push things too far for my "suspension of disbelief." But Burton and Swinburne were intriguing and different characters. And the story took enough turns to keep me guessing.

No masterpiece, but definitely a fun read.

Gerard Doyle did a great job narrating this story and I would certainly listen to other recordings of his.

I'd be willing to try another book by him, as he had some very good ideas. Unfortunately, he also had some very weak ideas and sometimes, it felt to me that there was a very simple and reasonable motivation available that he consciously avoided, in favor of a convoluted and unreasonable motivation.

Doyle's performance of Spring Heeled Jack was great - I didn't like the way the character was written, but he was performed well.

This book was a real mix of highs and lows. The explanation for the existence of a Steampunk Victorian era is fantastic. The depiction of one character's decent into madness is great. On the flip-side, the reason that character goes insane is paper thin, and I felt that there was a very good, accessible reason for him to begin going insane, that the author avoided. The antagonists in the book are extremely weakly written, their motivation feeling shallow and unbelievable. It feels to me like they were thrown in there because the book needed an exciting climax and that they were made to do cruelly evil actions up until that point so that the reader would appreciate that they are indeed bad guys. I suppose that's my major complaint - they are depicted as shallow Saturday morning cartoon bad guys, rather than being antagonists. Finally, the ending left me thinking "uh, what?" as the "moral" of the story was revealed. I think that I see what the author was going for, but I don't think that it was really achieved.

This is why I like history. These are real people. Richard Burton existed in real life. He was all the things that Mark Hodder wrote about his character and back story and then suddenly the story takes a turn and you are thrown into this fantastic steam-punk world filled with all your literary and historical heroes. I can't tell you how many times I consulted the internet, or even my college world history books, just to see if the latest bit he wrote was a true-to-life characteristic of this person, or if it was his own interpretation of who they might have become in this situation, and because of that I learned so much history it wasn't even funny. I took classes on some of these people and never had I once became so enthralled that I suddenly needed to know more about them. I am well read on Richard Burton, Algernon Swinburne, Oscar Wilde, and so many others now because of this book. So I have more than expanded my education over just picking up a single book.

I have done LOTS of Audiobooks, but this was my first steampunk novel. Overall I thought the performance was good and the story was solid. I will be checking out the 2nd book in the series.

The way it's based so closely on what we know of Burton's life, then it just runs wild. Plus it does Time travel in a way that didn't leave me going, "Wait a minute, now...".

I love Gerard Doyle. No question who was who, and I love how STRONG his voice can be, and how meak and little it can be also.

I laughed a few times. But more so it made me look up the characters in the book and take great interest in their actual lives.

I enjoyed this book and about 2/3 of the next... It started going down hill towards the end. From the reviews I don't think I'll purchase the third, but who knows, i may change my mind. But this really was a good time and worth a credit no matter what happens later.