Kingdom Beyond the Waves, The [Import] [Paperback]

Stephen Hunt (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: HarperVoyager (2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0007261985
• ISBN-13: 978-0007261987
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,570,046 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Stephen Hunt is a fantasy, science fiction, crime and thriller author who lives in Spain and the UK. He is best known for his best-selling Jackelian series of novels from HarperCollins, also the publisher of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis in the UK.

The Jackelian world is a fantasy adventure set in a far-future Earth where the passage of time has erased almost all memory of our current world from history. Electricity is now unreliable and classed as a dark power, with many of the nations of the world existing at a Victorian level of development and relying on steam-power, mechanical nanotechnology and biotechnology to survive and prosper.

It is a world of strange creatures, flashing blades, steammen servants, airship battles and high adventure.

Each novel is written as a stand-alone work, but share the same world and many of the same characters who criss-cross between the novels (a technique shared with fellow British fantasy author Terry Pratchett and his Discworld series).

Foreign language and international editions of the six novels of the Jackelian series have been sold to Tor Books (USA), Albin Michel (France), Verlagsgruppe Random House (Germany), Enterbrain Manga and Anime (Japan), Edições Saída de Emergência (Portugal), Paidós (Spain), AST (Russia), and the Anhui Literature and Art Publishing House (China).

Stephen maintains his own web site over at www.StephenHunt.net and when he is not writing, he can be found indulging in such interests as cooking, gardening, collecting comic-books, and building his collections of genre novels.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I love this book!, October 12, 2009

By 

Brian D - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Kingdom Beyond the Waves (Hardcover)

All right, I admit it at the start...I'm a big fan. This is the second installment of Stephen Hunt's slam bam steampunk/adventure series, and now I can't wait for "The Rise of the Iron Moon"'s American release.

The novels are character-driven adventures set in an imaginary world whose center is the nation of Jackals, a nation not unlike England. Because this is steampunk, Jackals is a coal-driven quasi-Charles Dickens era society of floating airships and gas lamps--a modern, but not too modern, society. The heroes are at once likeable and sympathetic, be they children with hidden bloodlines or strong men with anvils for hands or eccentric mechanical steammen or orphans with exoskeletons. Both novels are set in motion almost immediately--in the manner of an Indiana Jones movie--and what follows is a rich mixture of political intrigue, dark magic, and reprehensible rogues. There is almost no down time in either book--they propel themselves with the force of a steamroller until the final pages.

If there are any complaints leveled at Hunt's works, it's that he can be VERY ambitious. I thought that the climax of his first book, "The Court of the Air," was maybe too big, too spectacular. It had as many plot threads as a Tom Clancy novel, and when you marry that with a whole new planet of cultures, characters, and conflicts, it can and did get pretty hairy. But "The Kingdom Beyond the Waves" is much tighter, from start to finish. There is no shortage of action...it's rare to have a dozen pages slip by without a big revelation or a reversal of fortune, but the story is always gripping and credible--a heady task, given that earth quake-like forces can propel whole cities into the upper atmosphere: three-eyed reptiles can talk and fly; and...well, you get the picture.

In short: disgraced professor Amelia Harsh has just about given up on her father's quest--finding the ancient lost civilization of Camlantis--when a rich benefactor appears: Abraham Quest, the man who drove her father to ruin. As her options are limited, she gathers a crew composed of convicted slave traders and steroidally enhanced female soldiers and they board a refitted u-boat to sneak up the Shedarkshe river into the Daggish territory, a brutal jungle where all intruders run the risk of being forcibly assimilated into an animal-plant hive called the Greenmesh. On the way she must deal with a saboteur, a mutinous crew, and a growing awareness that secrets have been kept from her, and the true purpose of her expedition will not only endanger her life, but the lives and destiny of her entire world.

If you can't tell, Hunt's imagination is almost limitless, and there is no end of intrigue and plot twists throughout. And it's FUN to read...in fact, I had to keep telling myself to slow down, to savor. I like how he spreads it around, too: his female characters are every bit the equal of the males, and it is a mark of a gifted writer that even mechanical men are gIven as much personality and backstory as the flesh-and-blood ones. And this, I think, is Hunt's greatest strength: he has created a world that, two novels in, shows no signs of diminishment. He has so much going on in his first two novels that what I understand might be a six-book series seems entirely possible.

A note: while "The Kingdom Beyond the Waves" is a stand-alone novel, it helps to have read "The Court of the Air" beforehand. I love these books so much that I'm actually constructing a glossary of the unusual terms and phrases that might help readers a bit--it's about the only thing I thought was missing from these big, wonderful books...and I'd be happy to share it with anyone who wants it, or would like to contribute to it.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Jules Verne meets Steampunk meets Indiana Jones..., February 4, 2011

By 

Deb Ryan "debtomr" (Bellingham, MA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Kingdom Beyond the Waves (Hardcover)

Much tighter and more linear than Court of the Air, thus easier to keep track of , and enjoy, what's happening. Two main storylines, both engaging, instead of the myriad threads that convoluted the first book. It also provides some context to some of the obfuscated elements in Court of the Air; I have a much better grip on the relationships between the various political factions. The storyline with "Furnace-breath Nick" is particularly engrossing, because the character is a beguiling mix of The Shadow, Batman, and the Scarlet Pimpernel ("sink me") with a supernatural edge, and his interactions with Abraham Quest, the central financier whose motivations are nebulous, are full of nuance, tension, and intrigue - well-written shadow boxing and verbal chess. This reads like a sophisticated and erudite pulp serial where each chapter has some astounding plot twist ending in a cliffhanger...great imaginative fun. A wonderful adult comic book written with very elegant prose.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book, not meant for kids, June 21, 2010

By 

Swift 36 (Memphis) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Kingdom Beyond the Waves (Mass Market Paperback)

Hunt does it again! You'll want read The Court of the Air first, since even though this is a stand-alone story, it makes numerous references to people, groups, and events in its predecessor. Well-paced and plotted, with interesting characters, esp. the villains. The reason I say "not meant for kids" is that while the marketing/covers make both books look geared to adolescents, trust me, this is not Ender's Lame, Harry Pooter, or other kiddie-trooper ilk. In particular, the violence can be quite graphic. Genre-wise, Hunt's clearly steampunk, but though his work falls a bit short of early-Mieville quality, it doesn't do so by much.