Saturday 7 December 2013

URBAN FANTASY REVIEW: Clockwork Century Novel 6: Fiddlehead - Cherie Priest

Release Date: 21/11/13
Publisher:  Tor

SYNOPSIS:

Ex-spy 'Belle Boyd' is retired -- more or less. Retired from spying on the Confederacy anyway. Her short-lived marriage to a Union navy boy cast suspicion on those Southern loyalties, so her mid-forties found her unemployed, widowed and disgraced. Until her life-changing job offer from the staunchly Union Pinkerton Detective Agency. When she's required to assist Abraham Lincoln himself, she has to put any old loyalties firmly aside -- for a man she spied against twenty years ago. Lincoln's friend Gideon Bardsley, colleague and ex-slave, is targeted for assassination after the young inventor made a breakthrough. Fiddlehead, Bardsley's calculating engine, has proved the world is facing an extraordinary threat. Meaning it's not the time for civil war. Now Bardsley and Fiddlehead are in great danger as forces conspire to keep this potentially unifying secret, the war moving and the money flowing. With spies from both camps gunning for her, can even the notorious Belle Boyd hold the war-hawks at bay? Cherie Priest has been hailed as 'the High Priestess of Steampunk' - and you can see why in this latest wonderfully written adventure.


REVIEW:

History is not only fascinating to the reader but also can do a lot to inspire writers to create a unique hybrid in much the way the American Civil War has done for Cherie Priest, in this the sixth book in the Clockwork Chronicles series. Bringing just enough of the past to life with her own touch of mechanical mayhem to make this not only something unique but something that will appeal to a great many fantasy fans.

The prose is solid, the storyline has some wonderful twists and when you’ve backed it with characters that you just don’t want to lose all round makes this a great book to settle down with. Throw into the mix an author who has a clear love of the time so much so that the research and factual blends seamlessly with the fictional elements all round makes this a series that I’ll be sad to see end. Thank you Cherie.

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