Homunculus
It is the late 19th century and a mysterious airship orbits through the foggy skies. Its terrible secrets are sought by many, including the Royal Society, a fraudulent evangelist, a fiendish vivisectionist, an evil millionaire and an assorted group led by the scientist and explorer Professor Langdon St. Ives.
Can St. Ives keep the alien homunculus out of the claws of the villainous Ignacio Narbondo?
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Community Reviews
The first book I read by Blaylock was All The Bells on Earth .
[b:All The Bells On Earth|421028|All the Bells on Earth|James P. Blaylock|http:photo.goodreads.com/books/1174590304s/421028.jpg|1437645]
That book immediately won me over. It was an exquisite example of what Dark Fiction (or Urban Fantasy, or the new Weird, or whatever you call the genre) can do. Unfortunately, since that book I just haven't found another Blaylock book as good.
This book wasn't bad, and I guess I judged it two ways.
If I judged it on its own, I probably would have given it a 2. It starts slow, I didn't really find myself enjoying it until about halfway into the book. The characters are easy to confuse. There's a good sized cast, and they all seem to fall within two groups. The good and the bad. Within those groups the characters are all but interchangeable.
The plot was tangled, but still felt arbitrary. In the end I don't feel like the characters really moved the book, rather they were caught up in it.
Where this book scores points is when judged within the steampunk genre. This was one of the early cornerstones of that form. And in that respect it was a fun read. It did pick up in the second half. And if you like the general setting and style of steampunk stories you'll enjoy this one.
[b:All The Bells On Earth|421028|All the Bells on Earth|James P. Blaylock|http:photo.goodreads.com/books/1174590304s/421028.jpg|1437645]
That book immediately won me over. It was an exquisite example of what Dark Fiction (or Urban Fantasy, or the new Weird, or whatever you call the genre) can do. Unfortunately, since that book I just haven't found another Blaylock book as good.
This book wasn't bad, and I guess I judged it two ways.
If I judged it on its own, I probably would have given it a 2. It starts slow, I didn't really find myself enjoying it until about halfway into the book. The characters are easy to confuse. There's a good sized cast, and they all seem to fall within two groups. The good and the bad. Within those groups the characters are all but interchangeable.
The plot was tangled, but still felt arbitrary. In the end I don't feel like the characters really moved the book, rather they were caught up in it.
Where this book scores points is when judged within the steampunk genre. This was one of the early cornerstones of that form. And in that respect it was a fun read. It did pick up in the second half. And if you like the general setting and style of steampunk stories you'll enjoy this one.
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