This is a pretty awful book. It is awfully written, developed and edited. I would have fired the editor and publishing company for allowing something like this to go on sale to the general public. The characters are bizarre and unconvincing, the plot is erratic and confusing and the whole work is just riddled with typos and grammatical errors. What purpose did the fish people serve? Jesus, Jeter, read some Lovecraft for some good old fashioned fish tales. How was anyone supposed to relate to this directionless, spineless noodle of a protagonist? I do not recommend this book. Jeter does not even mention the word steampunk in this work; he supposedly "coined" the term after discussing the book. This is a complete waste of time and affront to literature. I would take this completely out of the Victorian era adventure novels and stick it right into the teenage vampire, Twilight-esque category for boys. I tried to read this book twice. The second time being successful. The reason it lost me the first time was with the introduction of one of the would-be villains, who maybe isn't really a villain. This is not an easy book to read. The great thing about reading an e-book edition is that you can find definitions for some of the words used in here quite easily. If you enjoy Victorian era literature, then you will want to be able to understand what some of these words, like gincrack, prognosticator, and piscine mean.I actually thought the book was entertaining, but the main character is one of those heroes that everything happens to, rather than being the one who makes things happen, for the most part. Every time he does do something to supposedly help himself, he just makes his situation three times worse.The females in this book are all portrayed as voracious sex beasts trying to get into the hero's pants, for what reason even he can't fathom. If you are looking for strong female characters, this is not your book. Well, actually, this is not your book for strong male characters either. Any strong character is pretty much crazy, and the plot is non-stop mayhem once the hero gets out of his shop and into the world. Okay, that's not completely true; the dog was a strong character. :PThis is one of the first of the modern wave of Steampunk (if you consider books by Jules Verne and HG Wells Steampunk, as many people do). If you read this book, then you owe it to yourself to read some of K. W. Jeter's contemporaries as well.
Do You like book Infernal Devices (2011)?
Classic Steampunk from the guy who named the movement. Archetypal genre fiction.
—rcabral08
