REVIEW: Arcadia Snips and the Steamwork Consortium, by Robert C. Rodgers

Arcadia Snips and the Steamwork Consortium is a rock-solid, hilarious foray into a steampunk dystopian alternate past. It’s been getting some rave attention over at Web Fiction Guide and there’s some very good reasons why. Keep reading and you’ll understand.

What a calculating beast is man

Deep within the strong-beating brass heart of every steampunk aficionado is a vacuum chilled series of hopeful gaslit rooms filled wall-to-wall with books. And one day soon, one of those shelves in my heart will have this book.

Arcadia Snips and the Steamwork Consortium is a tour de force of silly mixed with the macabre, scabrous copper tinge of blood. It manages to wind the dizzying height of humor and edge it aptly with careful cuts. From the very first chapter—and the chapter that hooked me—it makes its lighthearted swipes at the imagination and drew smile after smile. At first the steampunkish metaphor and simile seemed heavy-handed, overwrought in fact, but soon they became fuel for the whimsical engine of my delight.

Victorian attitudes abound in the brass-city, a dystopia in its own right but not in our future, but our accidentally forgotten alternative-past. A place where villains and heroes alike have an almost cartoonish bearing on a world that manages to tempt suspension of disbelief with daunting and brazen attitude but never ceases to both enchant and frighten at the same time. This tale has left me in fits of gooseflesh laughter more than once.

Expect strong humor mixed with the oil and grease of industry; expect grand legerdemain run through the cogs and wheels of progress and chewed up by clever antagonists, incompetently-competent protagonists, and even a bit of social commentary about the Victorian attitudes about gender wars. Why I even caught an almost-reference to the old television series “Remington Steele” (wherein a woman detective hires a male “face man” to pretend to be the investigator.)

Even people not inclined to the steampunk aesthetic will probably enjoy this story. It has a little bit of something for everyone. Little explanation is needed for much of the far-fetched mathematics and mechanics of the lunatic mind as it’s deeply buried in laugh-out-loud metaphors; allowing the conspiracy, detective work, and general slapstick amazement to drive the story onwards.

Link to review (via “Arcadia Snips and the Steamwork Consortium” @ Web Fiction Guide)

Direct Link: Arcadia Snips and the Steamwork Consortium.

REVIEW: Wonder City Stories, Jude McLaughlin

For anyone who likes super heroes and days-of-our-lives style drama, this story reviewed over at Web Fiction Guide, Wonder City Stories, might be just the thing for you.

Superhero life has the mundane and profound too, you know

"Young Paranormals Christian Association of Wonder City, working with super powered youth since 1964!"

The parallels between the YMCA and the YPCA tickled the cockles of my heart when I read the first two chapters of this story (And to start when I saw YPCA, I thought of the YMCA. This simply got confirmed straightaway when there's a pool near the YPCA.) I guess I'm just a sucker for four-letter-acronyms. I also play City of Heroes and I like super-powered stories. This may color my review positive somewhat.

I enjoyed following the heroine through her day, coming to the city, and living her life in the strange shadow of her mother. It has all the hallmarks of young adult drama and romance, with some slice-of-life as well. Especially the parts where sometimes as a reader I forgot that our heroine is indeed taller than most.

In my reading I fell in love with the history of the characters as much as the history of their entire society -- the paranormals and their plight.

Readers who want well-rounded drama stretched over believable, and adorable, characters who dwell in a living, breathing world, will find everything they're looking for in this story. There's almost something for everyone. The conversations and scenes trace a lineage of heroism and paranormal lives from the young (in our heroine) to the middle-aged and elderly lifestyles of these magnificent and interesting people.

Link to the review (via “Wonder City Stories” @ Web Fiction Guide.)

Direct link: Wonder City Stories, by Jude McLaughlin.

REVIEW: Spots the Space Marine, M.C.A. Hogarth

Spots the Space Marine has received some well deserved acclaim over at the Web Fiction Guide. I’ve been reading it this week and it’s certainly shaping up to be a story worth the time of any space opera loving sci-fi geek.

Intriguing, bite sized slices of life from the front lines

War. War never changes.

Except maybe when your squad happens to be named Team Kitty and your callsign sounds slightly silly to remain thematically prudent.

The prose of “Spots the Space Marine” is spartan almost laconic, but the mood comes across loud-and-clear. It reads generally like a radio-play; but retains the solid impact of a heftier work. The presentation forces the reader to instead invent their own voice for each of the characters and imagine themselves into the situation that narrates itself from the screen. The chapters are also so short they can be read in a bite—a style allowing the entire series to be grazed casually, episode at a time, or swallowed in a huge handful as time permits.

Spots presents herself as a likable person, yanked out of her comfort zone and thrust into a war zone. A woman among the war. The story then plays out in the conversation space between Spots and other marines. Their voices resonate, with hers playing the following melody of the narrative. Spots isn’t your normal marine. She’s also a mom. A fact that makes her something different, something familiar yet out of the ordinary to read about.

The part of the story that really began to hook me, however—like any proper sci-fi geek—happens to be the aliens. Not just aliens: bugs. The introduction suggests that the insectoid aliens have brought technology and know-how to humanity to aid them in their upcoming war against invader xeno bugs; but the first time that one of the friendly xenos appears in the story happens to be during a vignette titled “The Violinist,” where one gets an introduction to Spots. I have a soft spot for aliens and xeno racial epithets (like the piggies from Ender’s Game.) The friendly xenos here get to be the “fiddlers.”

The hardcore sci-fi reader and drama aficionado alike will find something to like about “Spots the Space Marine.”

Link to the review (via “Spots the Space Marine” @ Web Fiction Guide.)

Direct link: Spots the Space Marine, by M.C.A. Hogarth.

Mill Avenue Vexations Reviewed Extremely Brightly on Web Fiction Guide

Brilliant news peeps! One of the editors over at Web Fiction Guide, Grace McDermott, has posted a review of Mill Avenue Vexations and she has awesomely given us 4.5/5 stars! If anything has vindicated my writing and hard work, it’s getting this sort of criticism from a critic I know has been slogging through the dregs and the crème of the web serial community.

Here’s her beginning:

Mill Avenue Vexations is brilliant. There. I said it.

Instead of reading the first few chapters, keeping a track of what I liked and what I didn’t, I was caught up in the story and was already at volume four by the time I looked up.

Read the rest on the site.

Other choice comments from other visitor reviews, I wanted to highlight for everyone and did so over on Mill Avenue Vexations.

There are many more wonderful reviews and we are ever adoring of our fans who issued forth to put them there for us! By golly, it is that we shall put Vexations on the map in one way on another!

And, if you haven’t yet, get along and post a review!

Mill Avenue Vexations reviewed highly favorably on Web Fiction Guide

I admit, I am coming into this one extremely late and the day. I am fuzzy with sleep—and probably about to retire into my strange bedscape shortly. But this one is too fun and awesome to pass up.

Mill Avenue Vexations has been reviewed on Web Fiction Guide and it managed a 4.5/5 rating! That’s huge. WFG is the premiere site for online fiction right now because of the demise of Pages Unbound and this is a very good thing. Having a high review puts me in for better ranking on searches.

I will write a more comprehensive post about the entire affair tomorrow or Sunday, I’m sure.

Meanwhile, the links are available for your perusal.

View the review here.