the evolutionary void

Book of the Week: “The Affinity Bridge.”

I just finished The Affinity Bridge: it’s slightly later-period steampunk (1900s rather than the 1880s, which seems to be the default period for this sort of thing) that combines the detective genre with some fairly subtle horror. It’ll be interesting to see whether the series that it’s a part of will go farther into the supernatural: even so, GURPS called this sub-genre ‘Screampunk,’ and it fits. Good grasp of the time period and a good read, but I’m not sure that I would buy the later books in the series in hardback. Still, it’s the first book in a series which is worth looking at further.

So good-bye, The Evolutionary Void. You had a good run.

Book of the week… A bit of a problem, actually.

I just finished it; it’s part of an alternate-history series (Renaissance fantasy subtype) which I like in spite of itself. The only problem is the copy-editing and proofreading was… surprisingly bad, for a book that’s from a major SF/Fantasy publisher. I suspect that standards have slipped a little for the publisher in question.

I got nothing to replace it with, so we’re going to keep The Evolutionary Void for another week. Sorry.

Book of the Week: The Evolutionary Void.

Possibly I shouldn’t encourage Peter Hamilton by picking a book like The Evolutionary Void as Book of the Week – it’s not exactly encouraging him to stop writing 700+ page hard SF books only once a year – but he’s demonstrated a slightly distressing ability to get away with it. Such is life.

Adieu, I Shall Wear Midnight. It was fun.