The Serpent's Shadow

The Serpent’s Shadow: A Penny Dreadful Review

            Exotic ancient magic and a progressive suffragette. A secret society and a well-known fairy tale. One of my favorite authors and Edwardian London. The Serpent’s Shadow, by Mercedes Lackey, is the first of her Elemental Masters series. It is an excellent, engrossing story set in a detailed world. It also contains a very subtle rebelling of Snow White, which I did not realize until somebody poisoned an apple. I found that to be a delightful surprise.

            Dr. Maya Witherspoon has recently emigrated to London from her native India. She flees from the dark magic that has slain her parents. She opens a women’s health clinic to help the chorus girls and streetwalkers of London’s underclasses. She makes a comfortable home for herself, protected by her loyal servants, her several pets, and her cobbled-together magical knowledge. Though her mother was a sorceress, Maya knows very little. Has the mysterious force, the serpent’s shadow, that her mother feared followed her to this small foggy island?

            Mercedes Lackey has a gift for creating interesting heroes. They seem like genuine people. This makes any book by her hand a treat. The Edwardian setting is well-researched and vividly evoked. I feel as if I could take a train to London and actually locate Maya’s clinic.

            I rate The Serpent’s Shadow at four and a half gears out of five. I certainly intend to read the volumes that follow, and I recommend you do the same. It is different, intriguing, and scented with all the species of India.

Your Correspondent from the Bookstore,

Penny J. Merriweather

The Peshawar Lancers

The Peshawar Lancers, by S. M. Sterling: A Penny Dreadful Review

            Steampunk happens all over the world. S. M. Sterling presents a future with its progress mangled by asteroids slamming the Earth in the late Victorian Era. The British Empire is still a world power, but its seat is now in India, the British Isles rendered uninhabitable by the impacts. Technology and social mores have in some ways out-developed our own, but in many ways lag far behind where we are today. I shan’t spoil it for your reading, but I will say that I love what they’ve done with airships. Just wait until you see the royal yacht!

            Something was lacking. It wasn’t the story – that was exciting, with all sorts of mysteries to be solved and betrayals to be uncovered. It wasn’t the world – that was fascinating and brilliant. I think it must have been the main character. Athelstane King seemed a little generic somehow. For all his magnificent surroundings, his character simply wasn’t as captivating as it ought to have been. He is a dashing, gallant hero, but not an interesting one.

            S.M. Sterling is clearly a talented and brilliant writer. The world he creates is nothing short of amazing. Many of the characters that people his fantastic world seem real and fascinating, but not all. Sometimes they seem like puppets at the mercy of the storyteller. It isn’t bad – it could just be better.

            I give this book four gears out of five, simply because the world is so unique and fascinating. Give it a read for a completely different flavor of Steampunk.

Your Correspondent From The Bookstore,

Penny J. Merriweather