The Adventures of Alan Shaw, Volume 1

The Adventures of Alan Shaw: A Penny Dreadful Review

            I do love an exciting adventure story. The plucky hero defeats overwhelming odds and outwits a horrible villain. This sort of dashing tale is close to the heart of Steampunk. There are often deranged plots to foil and airships to clamber aboard. Therefore, Craig Hallam is to be applauded for creating The Adventures of Alan Shaw, Volume 1. If one likes adventure, one will like Alan Shaw.

            Craig Hallam’s exciting book is a collection of novellas detailing a few of the scrapes of young Alan Shaw. Alan Shaw is an orphan escaped from the workhouse and surviving on the streets. He’s clever, resourceful, and a silver-tongued little devil. In his first adventure, he stops a bomber and is adopted by a police constable, whose son Simon teaches him to read. In later chapters, a growing Alan encounters a shadowy organization, gypsies, a mechanical squid, a mad scientist, and a fishing boat. Alan is everything a man of action ought to be.

            Not all of Alan Shaw’s adventures turn out to have happy endings, however. Sometimes the bad guys win, and sometimes the good guys get hurt or killed. Alan doesn’t always have all the answers, and he is maneuvered like a pawn more than once. This gives the stories depth and seriousness that one would not necessarily expect from a book whose cover depicts a dashing young man swinging from an airship. I rather like this dimension to the adventures, but it might not be for everyone.

            I give The Adventures of Alan Shaw, Volume 1 four gears out of five. It is a lot of fun to read, and I look forward to seeing what other scrapes Alan Shaw talks (or shoots) his way out of.

Your Correspondent From The Bookstore,

Penny J. Merriweather

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

Weird Wild West

The Weird Wild West: A Penny Dreadful Review

            I love a bit of magic and weirdness in my frontier towns. Last December, eSpec Books released an anthology that delivers that in spades. The Weird Wild West, edited by Misty Massey, Emily Lavin Leverett, and Margaret St. Graw, contains many, many great tales of odd goings on.

            There are a great many stories in this anthology, so you will not leave disappointed, no matter what you’re looking for. Aliens, vengeful ghosts, shapeshifters, mad science, and necromancy run rampant across the weird wests of the authors’ imaginations.

            If I had to pick a favorite, it would be a toss up between “Blood Tellings,” by Wendy Wagner, and “Frank and Earnest,” by Tonia Brown. The first is the tale of a boy mature beyond his years. He speaks with the spirits of the dead. The local sheriff needs his help solving a murder in a house haunted by a malicious entity. The ending is beautiful. The second story involves the worst outlaws in the west and a kitten who defeats a mad scientist.

            The variety in this anthology is fantastic. I highly recommend The Weird Wild West for bite-sized adventures in a frontier that isn’t quite ordinary. I rate it four gears out of five.

Your Correspondent from the Bookstore,

Penny J. Merriweather