The Burning Sky was my very first encounter with a truly Steampunk novel. I read it more out of curiosity about the genre than anything. I’m glad I did, and I’m glad I chose this one as a starting point. This is my review.
The Burning Sky, by Joseph Robert Lewis is the first book in the Halcyon Trilogy. I found it to be the embodiment of the old writing adage that says: to create suspense, place your protagonists in a very bad situation, then make it worse. The story starts out with a horrific act of terrorism sweeping up an uninvolved mechanic on an air ship and carrying her along throughout the story. For most of the story, her plight and those of the characters that get rolled into the mix, get steadily worse. Resolution is saved for the very end.
The story is a masterful weave of multiple story lines, all winding around the main plot, although we don’t learn what that is for quite some time. However Mr. Lewis does not allow us to founder in confusion; each character’s contribution is quite interesting all on its own and the intrigue builds as they begin to coalesce and we start to make the connections.
Lewis is very good at characterization. His characters leap off the page to run and jump through the imagination, the dialogue is tight, fast, real and peppered with witticism. Each is unique, each character is powerful, each is completely believable.
The only aspect that gave me pause was the need to suspend my knowledge/belief systems long enough to accept that certain things were possible. Normally I read hard Sci-Fi and hold the authors to demonstrable scientific theory, I rarely enjoy fantasy. Although Steampunk skirts the fantasy genre, I found this story to be very enjoyable; only one aspect rung loudly as not possible, and explaining that would serve as a spoiler. However even that one thing did nothing to kill the story; I just needed to adjust my thinking a bit. The rest of the ride easily made up for that one speed bump.
I just finished The Burning Sky and am already anticipating enjoying the second book in the series: The Broken Sword. The sample included at the end of this book promises that I won’t be disappointed!
Great review. I haven’t read a steampunk novel either, but I have been meaning to. Perhaps I’ll check out this one.
Thanks, Draven. This was a great way to get my feet wet!
hmmmm – probably not nuts and bolts enough for me, or enough real science… or am I wrong?
Most of the story held to accepted science, Anne, it’s just old science used in new ways. But there were a few places where I found it difficult to suspend my disbelief – something necessary to enjoy most any story written in science fiction or fantasy. Just one is the idea of steam powered dirigibles. Steam engines are heavy, with their boilers and fire boxes. The water needed to run them and fuel to fire them are also heavy and needed in large quantity. Burning Sky found a novel way to skirt this issue, but that too raised questions. But, if I laid that dubious issue aside, it was a remarkable story and an enjoyable read.
Nice review! Actually I’m reading “Unbroken” by Laura Hillenbrand as of now, and it is a great read. You guys should get it well, about 20bucks off amazon, maybe. Anyway, this sounds like like a good book, I’ll go check it out after I’m done with the other one. 🙂
Thanks!
Thanks Ken. Let me apologize for the delay in getting your comment(s) posted. For some reason WordPress has been piping most every comment into the spam box and I have not thought to look in there for a while. I’m looking again at my filter settings and trying to figure out why this is happening.
It’s no problem, Allan. You know, I’ve been hearing a lot of that happening recently. Anyway, thanks for reading my email. 🙂
Have a nice weekend.
Oh, I have a friend who was talking about this one this weekend. I’ll have to give it a try. 🙂