Review: The Steampunk Trilogy

The Steampunk Trilogy (Paul diFilippo; Open Road Integrated Media) is three short novels set in a now-familiar sort of alternate-Victorian timeline replete with weird science, Lovecraftian monsters, and baroquely ornamented technology described in baroquely ornamental prose.

What distinguishes this particular outing is that it’s hilarious. In the first chapter of the first book, a runaway young Queen Victoria is replaced by a newt. In the second chapter (a flashback) an experiment in powering a steam locomotive from the waste heat of masses of uranium comes to a tragic, mushroom-clouded end when an accident slams them together just a bit too hard.

The books proceed in a tumbling cascade of ribaldry, parody, slapstick, and sly historical references that sends up every target in sight. And just when you think it’s all farce…Walt Whitman delivers a compassionate and psychologically astute critique of her poetry to Emily Dickinson, it isn’t comedy at all, and it’s even plot-relevant! Along the way, Herman Melville tangles with the Deep Ones and the naturalist Henry Agassiz recognizes Dagon as an ichthyosaurus…

Even if you’re not equipped to parse all the historical and literary in-jokes, this is fun stuff. If you are…I enjoyed the hell out of it. You probably will too.

5 comments

  1. Just ordered a used hardcover from Amazon. Cost a penny plus $4 shipping. I like hardcovers and have been stocking my library with used HC via Amazon.

    1. >I’m f’n sold. [Herman Melville tangles with the Deep Ones] sounds goshdarned fantastic.

      It’s actually almost a throwaway line in a climactic scene full of in-jokes. There’s whole plot thread depending on Cap’n Daniel Stormfield (the Mark Twain character) actually being a human/Deep-One hybrid from the village of Miskatonic – I thought that was funnier.

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