Unnatural History (Pax Britannia Book 1)
Action and adventure in a new Age of Steam! In two scant months the nation and all her colonies will celebrate 160 years of Queen Victoria’s glorious reign. But all is not well at the heart of the empire. It begins with a break-in at the Natural History Museum. A night watchman is murdered. An eminent Professor of Evolutionary Biology goes missing. Then a catastrophic Overground rail-crash unleashes the dinosaurs of London Zoo. But how are all these events connected? Is it really the work of crazed revolutionaries? Or are there yet more sinister forces at work? Enter Ulysses Quicksilver – dandy, rogue and agent of the throne. It is up to this dashing soldier of fortune to solve the mystery and uncover the truth before London degenerates into primitive madness and a villainous mastermind brings about the unthinkable – the downfall of the British empire! Pax Britannia is an exciting steampunk series, set on an alternate Earth where the British Empire still reigns and steam technology rules. This, the first Ulysses Quicksilver adventure, is a must-have for fans of steampunk and swashbuckling adventure alike!Action and adventure in a new Age of Steam! In two scant months the nation and all her colonies will celebrate 160 years of Queen Victoria’s glorious reign. But all is not well at the heart of the empire. It begins with a break-in at the Natural History Museum. A night watchman is murdered. An eminent Professor of Evolutionary Biology goes missing. Then a catastrophic Overground rail-crash unleashes the dinosaurs of London Zoo. But how are all these events connected? Is it really the work of crazed revolutionaries? Or are there yet more sinister forces at work? Enter Ulysses Quicksilver – dandy, rogue and agent of the throne. It is up to this dashing soldier of fortune to solve the mystery and uncover the truth before London degenerates into primitive madness and a villainous mastermind brings about the unthinkable – the downfall of the British empire! Pax Britannia is an exciting steampunk series, set on an alternate Earth where the British Empire still reigns and steam technology rules. This, the first Ulysses Quicksilver adventure, is a must-have for fans of steampunk and swashbuckling adventure alike!
Not balanced nor plausible,
The story includes also dinosaurs, discovered on an isolated island, that will roam London like Gozilla New York.
Many things don’t add up. One scene the hero meets his arch-enemy who pulls a gun. The next scene starts with those two fighting with swords. When the hero fights a dinosaur with his saber/ sword, he suddenly remembers that he has a gun….. so actually he could have shot the arch enemy as well.
The first half of the book is running, chasing, fighting, endless and extended descriptions and not in a very original way. In short: I was disappointed.
A Modern Penny Dreadful,
A mixture of steam punk alternative history, Ryder Haggard-style adventure, Hammer horror and Conan Doyle-ish whodunnit, mixed in with action sequences that wouldn’t be out of place in a Hollywood blockbuster, it often feels like a comic book without pictures (the fact that the author has also written comics might partly explain that). All the characters, from hero Ulysses Quicksilver to the bad guys, are stereotypes of one sort or another, drawn in broad strokes, but this suits the genre and the tone of the book. The same goes for the plot, which is suitably convoluted and packed full of incident. It might also be utterly implausible, but in a setting where dinosaurs still live, robots are commonplace and Queen Victoria is 160 years old, it fits in perfectly.
It might be valid to say that there is a surfeit of ideas on display, with some working better than others. Equally the focus on keeping the plot moving and on almost relentless action means that readers are given very little time to get to grips with the world Green has created. I’m sure this will be corrected in future books, but at times in Unnatural History it can leave your head spinning.
As adventure fiction however, Unnatural History provides great entertainment. Its utterly disposable and over the top at times, but it rockets along and gives you everything that you’d want from this sort of fantastical high adventure. On its own terms therefore it has to be consider a success and worthy of four stars.
A ripping yarn,