Books that smash a lot of genres together really make me happy on a fundamental level. It feels extremely rewarding as a reader to pick apart all the little pieces that make a whole, and this book fits that criteria to a T. The novels main characters are actual historical figures -- Sir Richard Francis Burton, the explorer, and Algernon Charles Swinburne, the poet -- and their backdrop is a Victorian-era London that has taken a drastic turn from the history that we know. As such, many of the other characters in the book were real people (including a cabal of villains thats a dream team of epic proportions), and the events that go on were real events that happened, though everything here is definitely skewed from center. A great read for anyone who enjoys weird-alternate-history-fantasy-science fiction. -- Joey Puente
Posted on: Mon, 20 Jan 2014 02:55:26 +0000