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A review by cyrce
Phoenix Rising by Pip Ballantine, Tee Morris
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.