The Affinity Bridge

Damn you, George Mann! Zombies & steampunk in the same book, and he makes me like it. The man has some kind of infenal powers. The inaugural adventures of Sir Maurice Newbury and Veronica Hobbes is an excellent introduction to the series. A series of murders in Whitechapel may or may not have supernatural origins, so Newbury is called in to investigate. In the middle of this case, the Queen calls him to the scene of a mysterious airship crash which has taken the life of a Dutch cousin. Things are odd at the crash site, with the pilot missing and the passengers perishing while tied to their seats. Is there a connection between the two cases? Zombies, automatons, a smattering of the occult, laudanum addiction, and the revelation that, show more unbeknownst to Newbury, Hobbes is also an agent of the Queen, hired to keep an eye on Newbury and his addictions. show less

I love it when two of my favorite genres - Victorian murder mystery and steampunk - come together in a story.

It is November 1901. Sir Maurice Newbury is an experienced anthropologist with the British Museum. He is also an agent of the Queen. He is good friends with Sir Charles Bainbridge, a chief Inspector at Scotland Yard. Sir Maurice also has a new assistant at the Museum, Miss Veronica Hobbes. Newbury and his assistant Hobbes are called to investigate the wreckage of a crashed airship and its missing automaton pilot, and attempt to solve a string of strangulation attributed to a mysterious blue glowing policeman while dealing with the revenant plague - aka zombies- that are ravaging the slums, including Whitechapel, of London.

It is show more possible that I will not amuse a number of individuals when I state that I feel that this book should be classified as a 'cozy steampunk mystery". It has all the trappings, setting, characters and overall atmosphere of a cozy Victorian set murder mystery series. In particular, It really has all I have come to enjoy in Charles Finch's Charles Lennox murder mystery series with the added accoutrements of the steampunk genre - airships, automatons - and the addition of zombies in the form of plague revenant victims. The main characters are charming, society class individuals with personalities of their own and the murder mystery is one that is easy to settle into. Not a page turner, and not, IMO, a 'engaging melodrama' as billed, but more of a fun, comfort read. I will say this, you really have to follow the story to its conclusion to see how all the pieces tie together.

I would recommend this book as a good primer for anyone who enjoys Victorian murder mysteries as a launching pad into the world of steampunk, to find out what all the excitement is about, and to test the waters to see if steampunk is something they might want to delve into further.

The Affinity Bridge is book one in what is so far a three book series - my local library only recently acquired book one - and I do look forward to following the further adventures of Newbury and Hobbes. show less

Let yourself read with a British accent. Go on, you know you want to. Imagine the version that you're filming in your head, which is obviously way better than any version anyone else could film. Enjoy the fights, the curiosities, the vague hints of mysticism that (spoilers) are only going to get heavier from here on out. And most importantly, doff your hat towards Sir Maurice and Miss Hobbes: you never know when they're going to save your lives and the lives of the whole Empire.
It's the right sort of jaunt for this Anglophile - damned fun and deeply memorable. Here's to the cases building in intensity to match the dedicated world-building, characterization, and delightful writing style.

More next week at RB:

There are a few things going on with The Affinity Bridge. It’s a page-turner, a detective story, it features Queen Victoria, it has spies, and it’s steampunk to name but a few of them. It’s quite a pot that George Mann is throwing ideas into.

It could be a mess and a bad pastiche of steampunk-Colan-Doyle-style as it does draw heavily from the idea of gentlemen detectives and the troubles of the upper-classes. But Mann has made it work. I was totally absorbed into his creation.

Simply he’s put his own stamp on everything. The streampunk is understated but integral. Foremost, this is a detective novel and Newbury and Hobbes have a mystery to solve. Actually two mysteries but the first, the death of peasants is overtaken by the crash show more of an airship, a case that is of far more important to the Crown.

Mann challenges the thinking of the time with Sir Maurice Newbury’s assistant, Miss Veronica Hobbes. Hobbes is in striking difference to his secretary Miss Coulthard, who is unable to function after the disappearance of her brother, which she suspects is at the hands of revenants who are stalking to the poorer areas of London. Hobbes on the other hand doesn’t think twice about hitching up her skirt and kicking the odd door from its hinges.

Mann grabs you by the scruff of the neck and throws you into his version of Victorian London, though I’m not taking any guesses at what year it is or how long Queen Victoria has been on the thrown and you’ll know why when you first meet her. He keeps the plot flying along. Newbury and Hobbes are fascinating in their own right but combined with the story Mann makes this a book that’s hard to put down and a world that’s hard to leave.

That isn’t to stay that it doesn’t have some weaknesses. There are a few action sequences, which are mostly well done but you get the feeling that Mann is enjoying himself too much in some places and that could they could have been cut down a little. I’m glad they are in there as they make for a nice change of tone from the politeness that Newbury usually exhibits.

There are a few words and phrases that jar every now and again and this is more to do with how well Mann captures the language of the time that when they get repeated you notice. But the banter and the dialogue is first rate.

Newbury is a gentlemen spy so his nemesis is a gentlemen of sorts. And the cat and mouse game that they play is teasing and fun. You can’t take this tale too seriously though the main characters have strong emotional connections and they have a believable fondness for each other. Mann has given The Affinity Bridge a strong central core and one that can grow and be explored in the next and subsequent books.

And there a few tip bits thrown into this one. Hints at what could happen in the future and what has happened in the past especially from the last scene. Now that was a surprise.

I’m greatly looking forward to seeing the next Newbury and Hobbes adventure, The Osiris Ritual, and I’m hoping that we’ll get to see more of Newbury’s interests in the Dark Arts and what secrets he’s able to tap into.

Highly Recommended show less

Roger of the Raj and Biggles meet steampunk. I loved it!

Victorian London, complete with airships, steam powered coaches, plague infected revenants and…murder! What’s not to like?

Sir Maurice Newbury, anthropologist at the British Museum, is an agent for the Crown. Miss Victoria Hobbes is his able assistant. Investigating a series of mysterious murders in Whitechapel, an airship crash in Finsbury Park and the disappearance of a staff member’s relative, Newbury and Hobbes find themselves unravelling a tangled web of clues to solve their intertwined cases.

Actually, it’s not such a tangled web - I figured it out after Hobbes visited the asylum. The characters aren’t especially unique; they are not portrayed in huge depth.

None of show more this mattered! I still wanted to read through to the end as fast as I could. I wanted to follow our intrepid characters in their acts of extraordinary derring-do and watch / read as they figured it out themselves.

Notice I wrote “watch” – this is so well written that it is like watching a movie. The writing is skilled, atmospheric and Mann creates a believable, detailed, steampunk Victorian London. The mystery moves at a fast pace, keeping you hooked and the physical “action” really ramps up from about halfway through.

It is rip-roaring fun. Just sit back and enjoy the ride…er…read.

Four out of Five Stars. show less

Supernatural Sleuthing in an Alternative London

Murder Mystery? Yes. Historical fiction? Quite so. Horror Novel? Oh yeah. Science Fiction? Most certainly! Yep, George Mann's debut novel newly released is jammed packed blending all four genres in one! In addition, The Affinity Bridge is not only a bloody good mix of all those styles of writing, but it also climbs to the top of the new genre of Victorian Steampunk. Those of you unfamiliar with just what Steampunk is, will be thoroughly introduced and mesmerized by the new world of an alternative Victorian London where the age of steam takes over to drive unusual clockwork automatons, steam driven coaches that replace horse and carriage, and where traveling by airship is the finest method show more of transportation. The author totally creates this mechanical London into a completely believable world that the reader will feel is realistic, and quite normal.

When the story opens, London is being ravished by a plague transported from India leaving victims in a zombie-like state called Revenants, and it's population is being severely diminished by a series of gruesome killings. The paupers and prostitutes of White Chapel are showing up dead by the dozens every day, leaving Scotland Yard at a loss to find the murderer. Some witnesses, and a few survivors, tell haunting stories of seeing a ghostly glowing-blue policeman. With the plague running rampant and the killer mass producing corpses, London's finest crime fighters are coming up empty and need some experienced assistance. They need someone with in-depth knowledge of the occult and paranormal occurences, and they know just the man to call.

Enter our hero, Sir Maurice Newbury, an agent to no one other than Queen Victoria, assisting the crown as a criminal investigator undercover as an anthropologist working in the basement of the British Museum. Sir Maurice and his newly assigned female assistant Miss Veronica Hobbes are immediately called into the fray to assist in both of the investigations. On their first day of the job another tragic disaster hits London, an airship falls from the sky plummeting 50 passengers down to their death. Unbeknownst to the public, these recently developed airships are piloted by modern automaton robots, and when Hobbes and Newbury board the crashed dirigible looking for clues, they notice the pilot is mysteriously missing. Could there be a link between the grisly murders and the airship crash? And so a third conundrum joins the mysterious plague and murders, piling a trilogy of puzzles on the two determined detectives. The Queen wants answers and Newbury must deliver.

The race is soon on as the two unlikely partners delve deep into the inner workings of derigible and robot manufacturing, slowly uncovering shocking revelations that will lead the duo to solve the mystery and catch the killer at large. This story is very creative, well written, and is loaded with action, humor, cool science fiction effects and a quite cleverly devised diabolical plot. It's adventurous, scary, and full of paranormal entities, yet a cleverly crafted murder mystery to rank high with a Sherlock Holmes story. The idea for this innovative story is fresh and new, a lot of fun, and will be a huge success as the series continues with more Newbury& Hobbes Investigations show less

The world of Victorian London is full of dark and mysterious activities, such as the strange plague that rots the body and forces the sufferer to crave human flesh has rattled the nerves of folks in the poorer districts. Meanwhile, sightings of a spectral, glowing policeman who strangles random people has Sir Maurice Newbury -- an agent for the Queen and specializing in the supernatural -- scrambling to find the culprit. In the midst of it all, a dirigible known as 'The Lady Armitage' crashes into Finsbury Park and bursts into flames. Normally, Scotland Yard would handle the investigation, but the Queen has a keen family interest in discovering what happened, so she chanres Sir Maurice and his new assistant, Miss Veronica Hobbes, to show more scour the wreckage for clues.

Combing the skeletal airship, they come across a group of crash victims restrained to their chairs so that they could not leave. Heading toward the front of the ship, they are unable to locate the pilot of the ship: no body, no skeleton, nothing to indicate that anyone had been steering the airship. Outside the wreckage, the meet with a Mr. Stokes a representative from Chapman and Villiers, one of the leading air transportation services in the country, and that hey had recently begun to use automatons to pilot their airships. Stokes assures Newbury and Hobbes that the automaton could not have malfunctioned. However, the duo sets out on their own investigation to find the missing pilot, and in the process, uncover the dark secret behind the automatons and a possible connection to the glowing policeman.

"The Affinity Bridge" spins a fun mystery/adventure tale set within the steampunk world of Victorian London. Electric lights, steam-powered airships, zombies, mechanical men -- what a world to explore, and yet author George Mann manages to keep things firmly within the Victorian world. One of my favorite examples of this is Miss Hobbes preferring to use a regular horse and carriage rather than one of those noisy, mechanical contraptions being controlled by drivers who still aren't too comfortable with the technology. Plus, his characters are all well-written and strong, from the unflappable Miss Hobbes (who has dark familial secrets) and the technologically-enthused Sir Maurice to the squirrely and smarmy Mr. Stokes and the unemotional and determined Pierre Villiers -- the creator of the automatons.

My only fault with the novel is the side story of John Coulthard. Introduced in the prologue while serving in the war in India, his character disappears almost immediately after that. His sister happens to be Sir Maurice's receptionist, but the search for him and the reason behind his disappearance don't affect the main story in any way and doesn't have any relevance to it.

But that is very minor in relation to the rest of the book. "The Affinity Bridge" is a great mixture of mystery and steampunk -- a fun read that I definitely enjoyed. show less