My thoughts of Priest’s Boneshaker and Brines’ The Queen’s Martian Rifles

It’s two — two — two reviews in one!

Both Brines and Priest give us an excellent look at what the genre of steampunk could be but so seldom is. I enjoyed every minute of each ebook. Have you ever read a Bernard Cornwell novel and said to yourself that this would be so much better with Martians?

Kady Cross, @KadyCross, author of The Girl in the Steel Corset said, “I think Steampunk is going to Mars in 2012. There’s been a shocking lack of space travel thus far.” Brines has landed on Mars with a wonderful story “The Queen’s Martian Rifles.”

Does the secret to the origin of Mankind lie within the Great Pyramid of Mars?

In this alternate steampunk adventure, the technical genius, Nicola Tesla, invented an anti-gravity coil that made steam-powered spaceships possible in the last decades of the 19^th century. By 1899 the British Empire not only covers much of Africa, North America, Asia and the Pacific but also includes a moon base and a protectorate with the French over the backward civilization native to the planet Mars. But that empire, and those of the other western colonial powers have powerful extraterrestrial enemies no one even suspects exist – enemies that have renewed an age-old secret war against Humanity using all the supernatural powers at their command.

The cast of characters is sprinkled with historical personalities such as Aleister Crowley, the famous occultist history remembers as “the wickedest man who ever lived,” and Viscount Sir James Bryce, British statesman, author, world traveler and mountaineer who claimed to have discovered Noah’s Ark on a mountain in eastern Turkey.

His granddaughter, Lady Rebecca Bryce, is a militant suffragette and unorthodox scholar of antiquities determined to search the Martian pyramids of Cydonia for evidence of her theories on the extraterrestrial origin of human civilization. An educated and intelligent woman in a world that relegates females to insipid garden parties, she yearns to “set the male dominated science of archeology on its head.” She doesn’t believe she needs a man to fulfill her. But will she discover on Mars what she really needs?

Recent college graduate David Mclaughlin wants to make a real difference in the world, not just “host tea parties for old ladies.” So he abandons his parents’ plans for him to become a clergyman and seeks adventure as an officer in the Queen’s Martian Rifle regiment. But snubbed and scorned by his “betters,” can David persevere and save the Earth from destruction?

We also meet little Din, David’s personal servant and a member of the Martian Untouchable caste. His clan has patiently suffered in slavery awaiting a promised savior. But after more than three millennia, has God forgotten them? Can Aleister bring down Western Civilization? Who are the Ascended Masters? What really happened to Atlantis? The answers lie within The Queen’s Martian Rifles! Available only as a download from Smashwords, Barnes & Noble and Amazon.

Brines’ ebook is excellent and priced at a dollar it’s the best bang for your steampunk buck. I highly recommend it.

Priest offered up “Bonshaker” — steampunk and zombies — need I say more?

In the early days of the Civil War, rumors of gold in the frozen Klondike brought hordes of newcomers to the Pacific Northwest. Anxious to compete, Russian prospectors commissioned inventor Leviticus Blue to create a great machine that could mine through Alaska’s ice. Thus was Dr. Blue’s Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine born.

But on its first test run the Boneshaker went terribly awry, destroying several blocks of downtown Seattle and unearthing a subterranean vein of blight gas that turned anyone who breathed it into the living dead.

Great pulp scifi/steampunk fiction. Boneshaker is a “must-read” for anyone interested in the genre. A mad Doctor, airship pirates, and zombies all set in a wild-west setting, this book has something for everyone.

All in all, both books offer pulpy scifi at its best. If you are looking for an introduction into steampunk, pick up one or both of these titles. Check out Brines’ The Queen’s Martian Rifles (link) and Priest’s Boneshaker (link) at Amazon.

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