The day that Steampunk changed my life

I am a huge fan of the internet. There are amazing and wonderful things to find there. LibraryThing is one of them. And one of the many interesting and wonderful things that you can be on LibraryThing is an Early Reviewer. An Early Reviewer is someone who signs up to request a copy of a book that is listed by one publisher or another through LibraryThing with the understanding that upon receipt and reading of that title, you will write a review of it on LibraryThing.

If you do not write reviews, you are less likely to get books. It’s a pretty simple formula, and one that I think works. The system is a good one and benefits the parties involved. At least, I believe that it does for now, as the list of titles grows every month, as does the list of publishers taking advantage of a little painless advertising and the potential for more word-of-web marketing. I’ve now received & reviewed 4 Early Reviewer titles. You’ll notice I don’t say books.

The Shadow Conspiracy II, edited by Phyllis Irene Radford & Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff and published by bookviewcafe.com (more on them later), is the very first eBook that I have ever read, and it was the title that I ‘won’ as an Early Reviewer. (I kind of like that you ‘win’ titles on ER. It is sort of like a game, really – you add your name to the seemingly endless list of names to request one or another or several different titles (you only get one title a month, so requesting a copy of any titles that you find interesting (in other words that you are likely to write on) is a good idea) and then you wait until the end of the month when you find out whether or not one will be sent your way. Fun!)

This collection of short stories in the Steampunk genre was also my first non-Mieville, non-graphic Steampunk reading. I’ve kind of avoided the literature. In the hands of Mieville, steam meets magic and world-building and that is intriguing, whereas a corset and a monocle and a few brass gears is pretty to look at, but not necessarily the stuff of good storytelling. I thought it would be a fun title, and a quick enough read (and, yes, I know, I read quickly as it is) and was happy to read that I’d won it.

Happily, I was completely blown away. I found the adventure and the technology and the social stuff and the storytelling (especially the storytelling) and the characters and the allusions entirely up my alley. The writing was energetic and lively. There is a lot of reference to historical persons and places and ideas (and I do intend to create a list of those allusions in this blog at some point) (Because I think it fun.) which may be off-putting to minds that are not so comfortable without all the facts to hand. I get it. I mean, I don’t experience it, but I comprehend and would then recommend keeping a list of names to check and stopping by here in a few days to read the list of allusions and follow the links to their own happy ends.

I was relieved to read not one romance. Not a single one. Adventure and rescue and flying ships and automata and Voudon and Lord Byron and The Nile, to be sure, but no idiotic seductions, no teenagers in love and not one piece of normalizing romantic advice. That alone would have been enough, but when you read of Galveston and of river travel and of airships and trains, well, you can imagine my delight.

Half of the stories follow male protagonists and half of them follow female protagonists. There is one story told through the words of three different people: a German girl, an English man and an African man raised in England from the age of 8, so that is the anomaly. It is called The Shadow of Kilimanjaro and is a story that left me (me!) absolutely silent for many minutes.

This is good episodic story telling. It is strong and specific and detailed and concise.

Not at all a surprise when you consider that the publisher of both volumes of The Shadow Conspiracy (and yes, the first one is now in my files) is BookViewCafe.com.

From their website:

Book View Café came together in March of 2008 around a group of authors (click here to see our complete author list) with a simple aim: to use the Internet to bring their work directly to their readers. It was already clear that a revolution was coming to the publishing industry and these authors wanted to help shape its course.

Working with a shoe-string budget and volunteer labor, but drawing on a collective century’s worth of experience in the publishing industry, they created the Book View Café website. Rather than just another clearing house for books online, they created a space where readers could browse and discover new authors and titles alongside current favorites. Aware that the Internet demands variety, the authors made sure that fresh fiction appeared on their front page every day, a feat made possible by the extensive list of material available to over twenty professional authors.

The Book View Café site officially launched in November of 2008. Since then the site has experienced a steady growth in readers and in author-members.

Did you read the author list? Did you? I did. More importantly, I read the side-bars and went to the different pages on the site and have now bought an eBook and will likely buy more from them. I am deeply impressed at the thoughtfulness of this site as well as the range of titles and genres available.

Used to be that I was relatively ambivalent about eBooks, feeling that they were useful for ridding libraries of the need to keep 17 copies of anything cluttering up the shelves, and perhaps saving the real paper for Real Literature. Between this experience and learning just how much authors can make selling their own works as eBooks (therefore giving the big finger to middle managers and other RealWorld evils), I am now sold.

For my birthday, I would like a used Nook Color, please. Thank you.

Next time: Allusions in The Shadow Conspiracy-s