Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl
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4.3 • 7 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Nineteenth century London is the center of a vast British Empire. Airships ply the skies and Queen Victoria presides over three-quarters of the known world—including the East Coast of America, following the failed revolution of 1775.
London might as well be a world away from Sandsend, a tiny village on the Yorkshire coast. Gideon Smith dreams of the adventure promised him by the lurid tales of Captain Lucian Trigger, the Hero of the Empire, told in Gideon's favorite "penny dreadful." When Gideon's father is lost at sea in highly mysterious circumstances Gideon is convinced that supernatural forces are at work. Deciding only Captain Lucian Trigger himself can aid him, Gideon sets off for London. On the way he rescues the mysterious mechanical girl Maria from a tumbledown house of shadows and iniquities. Together they make for London, where Gideon finally meets Captain Trigger.
But Trigger is little more than an aging fraud, providing cover for the covert activities of his lover, Dr. John Reed, a privateer and sometime agent of the British Crown. Looking for heroes but finding only frauds and crooks, it falls to Gideon to step up to the plate and attempt to save the day...but can a humble fisherman really become the true Hero of the Empire?
David Barnett's Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl is a fantastical steampunk fable set against an alternate historical backdrop: the ultimate Victoriana/steampunk mash-up!
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Barnett gleefully blends Victorian-era characters with steam and clockwork technology in a "steampulp" romance of supernatural adventure. In quiet Sandsend, young Gideon Smith dreams of adventures like those of pulp hero Capt. Lucian Trigger, as faithfully transcribed by Trigger's friend, Dr. John Reed. When Gideon's fisherman dad disappears at sea amid a string of bizarre events, visiting Irish author Bram Stoker blames vampires, but wandering mummies appear instead. Gideon sensibly heads to London to consult Trigger. Along the way, he teams up with Maria, a beautiful clockwork woman whose human brain is powered by a mysterious artifact from an ancient Viking longship, and tenacious reporter Aloysius Bent. Although Trigger isn't exactly the "robust adventurer" of storydom, he's got enough gumption to whisk Gideon and the others off to Egypt to find the missing Reed and stop a vast evil conspiracy. With sky pirates, gibbering frog-faced hordes, and nods to historical figures both real and imaginary, Barnett doesn't miss a trope, and even readers who don't usually love steampunk will gobble it up.
