Scan barcode
mellhay's review against another edition
5.0
Wellington Thornhill Books meets the lovely Eliza D. Braun as she is saving his arse from being tortured, by booming the place. But Eliza has a secret about saving Wellington. Agents Books and Braun work for the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences in different fields of the company. They each have strong personalities and feelings for the areas they excel in. Street agents and the archivist see each other as two different components. But, for their exceedingly strong believes they are paired up as new partners, in "Books" archives. Yet Agent Braun wants nothing more than anything to be back in the field blowing up something with her favorite weapon, dynamite. Miss Eliza Braun has a hard time at adjusting to being in the Archives trying to file the many magical items and cases away, so Mr. Wellington Books takes her to show her something new deeper in the Archives ~ Cases of the Unknown. After seeing hundreds of cases classified as Cases of the Unknown (Books opinion of words) Agent Braun decides with her abilities in the field and Books intelligence here in the Archives and basic training, to take on these cases. When Eliza comes across a case in filing that she recognizes as one her last partner had worked and ended up in the mental hospital over, she decides to do as he had done and pick up the case on her personal time.
I think I can go on and on about this book. It was so well written and so many different aspects that I enjoyed.
The book starts right in with a bang with action and bullets flying every which direction as the main characters meet. Then we step back a bit to have the world of The Ministry drawn for us to understand what they do and the set up of it. We learn the Archives, in the basement of the Ministry's office building, is a library of sorts and storage area for many peculiar items and past case information, almost magical items. The Archives even reminds me a little of the television show Warehouse 13 on the SyFy channel with the warehousing of magical. While we are learning of the Archives we are also getting to know the characters and the rough blend of personalities, but I have to say I love the give and take in jabs between these two. Once they talk of the Cases of the Unknown we see how Eliza then Books get drawn to one particular case. Before they realize it they are eyeballs deep in the investigation. Then we have another addition to the mix as the House of Usher is after Agent Books for reasons we are not yet aware of.
The characters are fun! Books is the gentlemanly kind of man, not one who thinks of loads of weapons, but one to get lost in the design of things and the puzzle in figuring them out. Books is one that loves the steam machinery and pully machinery, which is ever present in this book. Eliza is a kick arse ask questions later kind of woman. Eliza is the one who loves weapons and to make things go boom. Books even references her once, to himself as he is so gentlemanly, as the Angel of Destruction.
Some might say the book has a slow start or moves slow after the bang of a beginning in the first chapter. However, I have to say it's a perfect balance of action, fun and case building/solving for me. And the dialect and writing styles is a pleasure to read. This is a book to sit down with and enjoy from all angles; world building, characters, case solving ~ all for the style, fun, and mystery of it.
I will be looking forward to the next book with these characters and steampunk world. But until then I will be listening to the podcasts of different cases in the Cases of the Unknown section of the Archives.
I think I can go on and on about this book. It was so well written and so many different aspects that I enjoyed.
The book starts right in with a bang with action and bullets flying every which direction as the main characters meet. Then we step back a bit to have the world of The Ministry drawn for us to understand what they do and the set up of it. We learn the Archives, in the basement of the Ministry's office building, is a library of sorts and storage area for many peculiar items and past case information, almost magical items. The Archives even reminds me a little of the television show Warehouse 13 on the SyFy channel with the warehousing of magical. While we are learning of the Archives we are also getting to know the characters and the rough blend of personalities, but I have to say I love the give and take in jabs between these two. Once they talk of the Cases of the Unknown we see how Eliza then Books get drawn to one particular case. Before they realize it they are eyeballs deep in the investigation. Then we have another addition to the mix as the House of Usher is after Agent Books for reasons we are not yet aware of.
The characters are fun! Books is the gentlemanly kind of man, not one who thinks of loads of weapons, but one to get lost in the design of things and the puzzle in figuring them out. Books is one that loves the steam machinery and pully machinery, which is ever present in this book. Eliza is a kick arse ask questions later kind of woman. Eliza is the one who loves weapons and to make things go boom. Books even references her once, to himself as he is so gentlemanly, as the Angel of Destruction.
Some might say the book has a slow start or moves slow after the bang of a beginning in the first chapter. However, I have to say it's a perfect balance of action, fun and case building/solving for me. And the dialect and writing styles is a pleasure to read. This is a book to sit down with and enjoy from all angles; world building, characters, case solving ~ all for the style, fun, and mystery of it.
I will be looking forward to the next book with these characters and steampunk world. But until then I will be listening to the podcasts of different cases in the Cases of the Unknown section of the Archives.
rollforlibrarian's review against another edition
3.0
I picked this book up in a second hand bookshop in Darwin so I'd have something to read at Yalara and on the Ghan. It was the first line of the blurb that got my attention - I'm a sucker for fantasy books with librarians...
'Evil is most assuredly afoot—and Britain’s fate rests in the hands of an alluring renegade . . . and a librarian.'
The dialogue was a lot of fun, there were gadgets aplenty and some very good storytelling in places. The degree of action most certainly did not disappoint. Plenty of the characters were a lot of fun too. It had a lot of fantastic things going for it. And yet I still haven't found that steampunk series to love.
The heroine, Eliza Braun, is possibly the biggest issue. The strong man, brainy woman trope has been taken and gender switched. To me that's not turning a trope on its head. It's becoming almost commonplace. It's a trope in itself. The degree of flamboyant feisty violence in full public view is fun but it just doesn't fly in the Victorian setting, fantasy or no. She'd be quite over the top even in modern settings.
In a related problem, some of the devices feel like twenty-first century technology with gears glued on. Not all - some of the devices were great. But enough that it felt like a problem. Modern solutions to the problems - just with more brass.
Also, an Australian called Bruce who speaks even more Ocker than Crocodile Dundee? From an Australian perspective I found this character jarring. He was at least a well fleshed out character, as were most. I found a couple of other issues, but... too spoilery.
None of these problems were abandon-the-book or throw-against-the-wall bad but they did hold a good book back from being an excellent one. I'm undecided as to whether or not I'll read the next book in the series. However, if you're a lover of steampunk books this one is worth a read.
'Evil is most assuredly afoot—and Britain’s fate rests in the hands of an alluring renegade . . . and a librarian.'
The dialogue was a lot of fun, there were gadgets aplenty and some very good storytelling in places. The degree of action most certainly did not disappoint. Plenty of the characters were a lot of fun too. It had a lot of fantastic things going for it. And yet I still haven't found that steampunk series to love.
The heroine, Eliza Braun, is possibly the biggest issue. The strong man, brainy woman trope has been taken and gender switched. To me that's not turning a trope on its head. It's becoming almost commonplace. It's a trope in itself. The degree of flamboyant feisty violence in full public view is fun but it just doesn't fly in the Victorian setting, fantasy or no. She'd be quite over the top even in modern settings.
In a related problem, some of the devices feel like twenty-first century technology with gears glued on. Not all - some of the devices were great. But enough that it felt like a problem. Modern solutions to the problems - just with more brass.
Also, an Australian called Bruce who speaks even more Ocker than Crocodile Dundee? From an Australian perspective I found this character jarring. He was at least a well fleshed out character, as were most. I found a couple of other issues, but... too spoilery.
None of these problems were abandon-the-book or throw-against-the-wall bad but they did hold a good book back from being an excellent one. I'm undecided as to whether or not I'll read the next book in the series. However, if you're a lover of steampunk books this one is worth a read.
sapeiffer's review against another edition
Frequent sentence structure mistakes, flat characters yet also with inconsistent patterns of behavior
stlorca's review against another edition
3.0
IO9 raves about Phoenix Rising, the first of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences series. I am NOT impressed. It's supposed to be a fun, pulpy adventure set in a steampunk Victorian England. It frequently reads like mediocre fan fiction and it badly needs an editor who hasn't been taking bong hits while working. Clunky prose and stock characters (the uptight supervisor, the timid, uptight librarian, the ballsy female agent who shoots first, shoots again, shoots some more and then doesn't bother asking questions) make this book a chore. I might finish it, I might not. Instead, readers should try Charles Stross''s far superior "Laundry" series for British bureaucracy done right.
kraley's review against another edition
1.0
I only got about 20% into this book. I don't know if it was just me, but the dialogue was too painful to continue. Not for me, and I usually love Steampunk.
corita's review against another edition
3.0
Hold On to Your Tea Cup
Agent Books is an archivist, glorified librarian and cataloger of unusual artifacts, and Agent Braun is an unruly field agent who has trouble following rules. They have been naughty, and their superiors have demoted Agent Braun to the archives–Books and Braun are stuck with each other in the dank underground storage area that houses strange and mysterious artifacts.
No, it’s not your imagination. The story practically shouts Warehouse 13 in Victorian England.
They work for the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences, protectors of the British Empire and collectors of “unusual” artifacts. Braun is not content to serve her time in the archives and decides to investigate the case her partner was working on when he went crazy. Bruan pulls Books into her investigation, and as the story progressives a reader might begin to wonder who in this duo is more crazy.
Phoenix Rising: A Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Novel by Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris is a Steampunk adventure with explosives, carriage chases, daring rescues, beautiful mercenary agents, evil geniuses, automatons, lots of steam, bigoted wealthy people who wish to take over the world, and two agents who blunter into places they really shouldn’t. Add to all that, their director’s mysterious shenanigans in the archive’s secret, locked room. “What’s he up to?” is a story question left hanging for book two.
Who Will Like this?
People who love lighthearted Steampunk adventures will definitely like this book. It was a fun read. The book doesn’t take itself too seriously and neither should the reader. It has a little bit of everything: adventure, death, steam, sex, underworld slime, wealthy slime.
James Blaylock, J. W. Jeter, and Tim Powers, the fathers of steampunk, have said that when they started writing Steampunk they weren’t trying to make a serious statement; they were having fun telling zany stories. This book is written in the same vein.
Confession Time
I wanted to like this story; however, I had trouble getting into it. I read two other books in between putting Phoenix Rising aside and picking it up again. It just didn’t grab me. I think most people who like Steampunk would enjoy it. For me, it was okay, predictable, and flat. In other words, nothing to shout about.
Here are the issues I had:
1. There was nothing new, and some of the story seemed borrowed without much effort to move in new directions.
2. The protagonists were stereotypes, the typical buddy cops/investigators/agents. Braun was the wild crazy one and Books the mild mannered sane one. Casting Braun as a woman didn’t change the dynamics because she fit the crazy cop/agent mold to a tee.
3. The antagonists were also bad stereotypes, James Bond villains stepping back into Victorian England. I expected one of them to twist his handlebar mustache–thankfully that didn’t happen.
Character driven novels pull me into a story and keep me engaged. I want to care about the characters--that didn’t happen in this book.
cyrce's review against another edition
5.0
I managed to finish off Phoenix Rising in less than 24 hours, which just goes to how good this series has started off. I absolutely adored Ballantine and Morris’s writing, switching between the two main characters’ points-of-view. I have half a mind to read Phoenix Rising again. I’ve never enjoyed a steampunk novel this much before.
Then again, I don’t usually read steampunk novels. They’ve never appealed to me. But this one…well, apart from being pulled by my sister, the blurb on the back of the book was just screaming at me to read it. I thought that it would be following in the same vein as the Horatio Lyle books (which I adore). But the librarian wasn’t giving long-winded explanations of science unless he had to and, though I would have preferred a little more information on how everything worked in the beginning, the implicit nature of the writing worked out very well.
Maybe I’m attributing something more to it then there is, however.
Braun is the catalyst in the novel. Her actions at the beginning have her ‘demoted’ to work with Wellington in the Archives–something that she isn’t thrilled about at all. Her talents, after all, have to do with dynamite and seduction. Shelving cases from other field agents’ work is not something that she’s interested in. It’s when Wellington shows her the dead end cases that she finds a case that her ex-partner had been working on before being found insane in a gutter by another agent. From there, Braun pulls Books out of his precious archives and into some much needed field work in order to get revenge on the men (and the woman) that caused her ex-partner to lose his mind.
Between the two main characters, I find myself loving Books far more than Braun, though she does have her endearing moments (the opera scene was just great!). Books has the more interesting gadgets and you have to wonder if the guys in R&D at the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences aren’t just jealous of his work that they let him languish in the Archives.
Then again, I don’t usually read steampunk novels. They’ve never appealed to me. But this one…well, apart from being pulled by my sister, the blurb on the back of the book was just screaming at me to read it. I thought that it would be following in the same vein as the Horatio Lyle books (which I adore). But the librarian wasn’t giving long-winded explanations of science unless he had to and, though I would have preferred a little more information on how everything worked in the beginning, the implicit nature of the writing worked out very well.
Spoiler
Wellington Books and Eliza Braun are a great pair, and a classic as well. The action hero(ine) and the professor. Or, in this case, the librarian. Their last names kind of give away as to which one is which, don’t they? Books, the librarian (throughout the novel, he’s correcting people about that: he’s an archivist, not a librarian), isn’t completely inept at field work even though that is what Eliza Braun believes in the beginning. I would love to find out more of his military background and exactly how capable he could be in the field. In fact, it’s all his fault that I thought this book would be taking a Horatio Lyle fantasy bent to it–the whole thing with hearing his father’s voice in his head. I had initially assumed that perhaps he had some case of Multiple Personality Disorder, but the voice is turning out to be his assumptions of what his father might say given the situation. And yet, there’s just something about it…Maybe I’m attributing something more to it then there is, however.
Braun is the catalyst in the novel. Her actions at the beginning have her ‘demoted’ to work with Wellington in the Archives–something that she isn’t thrilled about at all. Her talents, after all, have to do with dynamite and seduction. Shelving cases from other field agents’ work is not something that she’s interested in. It’s when Wellington shows her the dead end cases that she finds a case that her ex-partner had been working on before being found insane in a gutter by another agent. From there, Braun pulls Books out of his precious archives and into some much needed field work in order to get revenge on the men (and the woman) that caused her ex-partner to lose his mind.
Between the two main characters, I find myself loving Books far more than Braun, though she does have her endearing moments (the opera scene was just great!). Books has the more interesting gadgets and you have to wonder if the guys in R&D at the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences aren’t just jealous of his work that they let him languish in the Archives.
mikaiten's review against another edition
4.0
The story started off strong, then quieted down a bit in the middle. I liked the characters though, so I stuck it out and really enjoyed the ending. Can't wait to read the next book!
rtpodzemny's review against another edition
3.0
A well done brass-goggles adventure with shades of James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, and My Fair Lady.