Karen Memory
“You ain’t gonna like what I have to tell you, but I’m gonna tell you anyway. See, my name is Karen Memery, like memory only spelt with an e, and I’m one of the girls what works in the Hôtel Mon Cherie on Amity Street. Hôtel has a little hat over the o like that. It’s French, so Beatrice tells me.”
Set in the late 19th century—when the city we now call Seattle Underground was the whole town (and still on the surface), when airships plied the trade routes, would-be gold miners were heading to the gold fields of Alaska, and steam-powered mechanicals stalked the waterfront, Karen is a young woman on her own, is making the best of her orphaned state by working in Madame Damnable’s high-quality bordello. Through Karen’s eyes we get to know the other girls in the house—a resourceful group—and the poor and the powerful of the town. Trouble erupts one night when a badly injured girl arrives at their door, beggin sanctuary, followed by the man who holds her indenture, and who has a machine that can take over anyone’s mind and control their actions. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, the next night brings a body dumped in their rubbish heap—a streetwalker who has been brutally murdered.
Bear brings alive this Jack-the-Ripper yarn of the old west with a light touch in Karen’s own memorable voice, and a mesmerizing evocation of classic steam-powered science.
At the Publisher’s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Blissful steam-punk adventure with Red Indians and Sewing Machines (?),
Mark Shackelford (Worthing, UK) –
I thoroughly enjoyed this helter-skelter ride through a richly re-imagined Seattle/San Francisco/Vancouver in that Victorian alter-world of steam-punk sewing monsters, the Lone Ranger (and Tonto), a cast of big hearted whores and a sensible number of really quite unpleasant men (who all richly deserved their fates).
Some laugh put loud moments … “…maybe we’d eluded them for a bit. Not for long, though, because it turns out sprinting through the streets in a sewing machine with a Red Indian for an outrider does draw something of a crowd”… (well, I laughed out loud…)
Steampunk Cowboys and Indians and Prostitutes,
The eponymous protagonist has a great voice that’s very distinct,