“How far back did he envision all this—the zeppelin that serves as his tomb, the shining tin boy speaking with his voice, and someone imprisoned here to listen to him? When he started drawing up the plans for the mechanical boy, he must have foreseen his own death. He was already thinking, back then, that I would find him and kill him, and that later I would sit at this desk to hear his tales.”

Book Review:

Review by Debbie Lee Wesselmann (APR 4, 2010)

Every so often, a novel is published that is so inventive, so rich that it transports its readers deep into its fictional world and won’t let go until the end. Dexter Palmer’s steampunk The Dream of Perpetual Motion is that kind of book. Set at the beginning of the twentieth century, after “the age of miracles,” this eloquent and often playful tale, stuffed full of allusions and sly commentary, is narrated by Harold, a man imprisoned aboard the zeppelin Chrysalis, a failing “perpetual motion machine.” He is alone except for the voice of his beloved Miranda and a crew of mechanical men. As he tells of his evolution from a shy, awkward boy who wants nothing more than to ride the Tornado at the carnival to the murderer of Prospero Taligent, the father of Miranda and one of the most celebrated inventors of his day, Harold spins a mesmerizing story of how he attained his “heart’s desire,” even though that was not what he wanted.

In true steampunk fashion, the city of Xeroville teems with technology rooted in the knowledge of the day: mechanical men instead of robots; answering machines that record on drums of wax; flying cars that rattle; teaching helmets lowered by cables and operated by hand cranks; and, of course, a zeppelin powered by the first (seemingly) perpetual motion machine. The atmosphere is a combination of noir, nostalgia, and the outrageous. What is most remarkable is how Palmer holds this all together with a confident narrative voice that shifts easily from the philosophical to the satirical. His prose is astonishing at times with its rhythms and precision.

At the heart of this novel lies the archetypical Industrial Revolution theme of dehumanization. Before his imprisonment, Harold cranks out greeting card copy in a cubicle the way a factory machine spits out parts. As his co-worker Ophelia says, “This is a special thing that we do, that everyone takes for granted: people need us to say the things for them that they wish they could say themselves . . . “ Harold’s sister Astrid changes forever after she kisses a mechanical demon (a metaphor for her earlier selling her dignity for a few dollars) and starts becoming more metal than human, both figuratively and literally. And Miranda, Prospero’s adopted daughter, is so isolated from society that she cannot hold a conversation with another ten year old. Prospero wants her perfect, the way he perceives his inventions, and he cannot accept anything less than an immutable Virgin Queen without emotions and ordinary desires. The flip side to Miranda’s possible perfection is Prospero’s “son” Caliban, a creation akin to Frankenstein’s monster, cobbled together by cadaver parts and impressing Harold as being possibly more brilliant than Prospero himself but still deeply flawed.

The novel evokes Jules Verne, Neal Stephenson, the anime Metropolis, and Frankenstein, with allusions to Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Baum’s The Wizard of Oz. It is an alternate world Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, where the good boy who gets the Golden Ticket suffers in the end, and the “kid in the class who still carries disfiguring scars across his face, earned during some misadventures in the forbidden culs-de-sac of a local chocolate factory” has more respect. Unicorns are real flesh and blood, but are engineered. Real men dress up as tin men, and tin men look real.

The author flirts with metafiction and tackles the issue of society’s relationship with art and the written word. In Xeroville, art at Taligent University is evaluated by the Critic-O-Matic, a machine filled with fluid and a cash-strapped undergraduate whose physiological responses deliver grades. In a playful send-up of deconstructionism, a writing professor instructs students to cut up their copies of The Tempest and “then, as if they are writing ransom notes, they must rearrange the words into another work that is to ‘reflect the spirit of the twentieth century.’” Harold scatters random words across his desk as he daydreams. When the professor feeds Harold’s unthinking rearrangement of the play into the machine, the Critic-O-Matic declares it “absolutely brilliant.” The question of authorship gets muddled at times. Is it Harold? Or Prospero? Or Dexter Palmer, who makes an appearance in his own novel as an uncomfortable man who drones “on and on for an hour”? Is this a story a dream or a memoir? As Harold writes, “. . . these phrases have lost their meaning through endless repetition, like everything else in this modern, mechanical age . . . Stories? We have no time for them; we have no patience.”

The events that brought Harold to his fate form an eloquent tale of misguided love, dreams, and self-destruction. The novel offers such a rich array of characters, ideas, and imagery that reading it feels like eating an enormous, magical feast. I highly recommend it.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 46 readers
PUBLISHER:	St. Martin’s Press; 1 edition (March 2, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Debbie Lee Wesselmann
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Dexter Palmer
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More Steampunk: The Kingdom of Ohio by Matthew Flaming The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson

Bibliography:

• The Dream of Perpetual Motion (March 2010)

Lord Maccon scrubbed his face with his hand, reached desperately for a nearby teapot, and drained it through the spout.

Miss Tarabotti looked away from the horrible sight. Who was it that had said, ‘Only just civilized?’ She closed her eyes and considered, realizing it must have been she.  She fluttered one hand to her throat. “Please, Lord Maccon, use one of the cups. My delicate sensibilities.”

The earl actually snorted. “My dear Miss Tarabotti, if you possessed any such things, you certainly have never shown them to me.” But he did put down the teapot.

Book Review:

Review by Ann Wilkes (JAN 29, 2010)

If you like humor with your vampires, ghosts in your alternate history, spinsters with superpowers in your period fiction, or werewolves in your romantic comedy, Soulless (The Parasol Protectorate) is just what you’re looking for. Gail Carriger’s protagonist is a Victorian woman who has been deemed a hopeless spinster by her own mother because of her too-large nose and Italian heritage. As such, she is forgiven her directness and lack of discretion. Fortunately for all concerned, her excitable and easily scandalized mother doesn’t know Alexia Tarabotti is soulless as well.

As the tale begins, we find Alexia warding off the fanged advances of a most ill-mannered vampire. She wonders why the hive hasn’t told him about her. At a touch from Alexia, vampire and werewolf fangs retract and the wearer of said fangs is, so long as he or she is in contact with Alexia, human and mortal. She sticks her wooden hair “stake” into his chest. When he tries to strangle her instead, she drives the stake into his heart with her slightly weaponized parasol.

Alexia spent much time in the library with her late father’s books which encompass the study of supernaturals, science and anatomy with some provocative plates. She has no lack of curiosity of the matters of love, but no practical experience.

Lord Maccon, the Fourth Earl of Woolsey, is one of the oldest werewolves alive and he’s the local head of BUR, the Bureau of Unnatural Registry. Lord Maccon is completed confounded by the ways of women and enamored with Alexia, nose, dark skin and forthrightness notwithstanding. Imagine the hilarity that ensues when the two strive to uncover the mystery of the disappearing vampires and werewolves coupled with (pardon the pun) the appearance of non-registered, ill-mannered vampires. And then there’s the supernaturally strong guy that’s stalking Alexia. This guy’s face looks not quite finished and devoid of emotion.

I love how Carriger showed werewolves having to deal with their “monthly” problem, the complications of finding clothes after traveling in wolf form and the supernatural sub-culture. I devoured this book in a couple of days and I look forward to the sequel, Changeless, which is due out in March.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 350 readers
PUBLISHER:	Orbit; Original edition (October 1, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Ann Wilkes
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Gail Carriger (very entertaining!)
EXTRAS:	Excerpt Ann Wilkes interview with Gail Carriger
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite Sharp Teeth By Tony Barlow Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde

Bibliography:

The Parasol Protectorate

• Soulless (2009)
• Changeless (2010)
• Blameless (2010)
• Heartless (2011)
• Timeless (March 2012)