Customer Reviews

Unnatural History: Pax Britannia Series

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I'm a sucker for anything that has the phrase "Steampunk" or "Age of Steam" boldly emblazoned on its front or back cover. The plot elements were intriguing, and the back cover got me hooked with its promises of Queen Victoria ruling far beyond her natural lifespan thanks to the wonders of "modern technology". But this is largely adventure/mystery pastiche. Take 2 parts Holmes, add one part Quartermain and one part Verne, and you get Pax Britannia. Hackneyed plot twists, by-the-numbers action sequences (seriously, I felt like I had seen these scenes in movies that contained the words "Indiana Jones"), and just-in-time rescues (maybe the series should be called "Deus Ex Machina") -- it's just all too formulaic.

I just feel a little robbed -- I had high hopes. I doubt I'll read more in this series, but you never know. I am, after all, a sucker for Steampunk.

Unnatural History is the first in a steampunk series called Pax Britannica, published by Abaddon books. The back cover includes an endorsement by Clive Barker, which I can only hope was referring to some other title published by Abaddon. I took Unnatural History on summer vacation with me, knowing it was likely to be pulpy fare, given the description of the hero, Ulysses Quicksilver on the bookjacket: "dandy, rogue, and agent of the throne. It is up to his dashing soldier of fortune to solve the mystery and uncover the truth before London degenerates into primitive madness and a villainous mastermind brings about the unthinkable." Some of my best childhood memories are of reading Conan or Doc Savage paperback reissues on beaches, so it seemed appropriate. Jonathan Green might be (and I hope he is) attempting to emulate a pulp writer by writing poorly, if that's his agenda he's overshot his mark. Both Robert E. Howard and Kenneth Robeson (Lester Dent) had their moments of bad writing, but the brilliance of their raw creativity shone through nonetheless. I can still read both Conan and Doc Savage without feeling the need to pick up a red correcting pen.

With Jonathan Green, I not only picked the pen up, I made good use of it. I could be an arrogant bastard and say I want his job, but I'll settle for his editor's. This book has enough writing errors to fill a semester of teaching composition, from lack of precedent to horribly mixed metaphors, ridiculously wordy prose to word choice errors (such as "while" away the time - it's supposed to be "wile".) And this is just the technical side of his writing.

I was hoping that, despite the technical issues, the story itself might be worth reading, or at the very least, for recommending to younger adolescent readers. I can suspend my need for cutting edge special effects when I see a film, so why not suspend my need for correct grammar?

This was not the case. Before I move on, I'll recommend some good steampunk for the YA set: Airborn by Kenneth Oppel, Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve, or Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld.

Interestingly, Mr. Green's missteps are as revealing as other writers' leaps and bounds.

Firstly, Green has created an alternate history where the British Empire, and strangely, Nazi Germany have survived into the 1990s. I'm dubious about the likelihood of the rise of the Third Reich if Britain was still a powerful world Empire, but I was willing to let it stand for the sake of fun. Sadly, Green's neo-Victorian '90s, while playfully amusing at times (he seems to suggest Michael Crichton as a major professor of Evolutionary Biology), reads like a catalog of all the things the Victorian era is presented as in steampunk, and yet in its best iterations, never really is. There are airships, Victorian slang (toadies and toffs), and of course, a "brown velvet frock coat" (13). What could be more steampunk? The problem with Green's approach is that he writes as though he doesn't understand history--there are few explanations (I can only hope they are forthcoming) about why the world is still stuck in a very proper and British nineteenth century.

Now, one might argue that I'm being unfair, and I should just let Green have his fun, but as a critical scholar, I expect good historical research and speculation, even in a mindless adventure story. Consider how Paul Guinan used primary historical sources in writing Boilerplate, or the use of Henry Mayhew's writings on the London poor in Jeter, Powers, and Blaylock's steampunk novels of the '80s. Even when a writer conjectures a future, rather than an established past, there must be a believability to it. Stirling's Peshawar Lancers is a dense read, because he's gone to the trouble of extensive world-building. This is a standard task for the writer of SF and Fantasy. If your world doesn't hold together, your story won't either. Because we know little about the why of the setting of Pax Britannica, we find it hard to imagine, hard to see what characters look like - what are they wearing? Are brown frock coats back in style, or did they never go out?

Second, Green's hero, Ulysses Quicksilver, is a pulp hero without any real post-colonial sensibilities. While he has some rogue tendencies, he is still an unswervingly loyal agent of the Crown. He is a caricature of a number of other heroes, most notably Batman and Doc Savage - a mix of brawn and brains, neither of which are delivered well: the brains always seem to be something Quicksilver is lucky enough to stumble upon, rather than a logical deduction. The brawn is likewise without precedent until Quicksilver needs it. While he makes a passing reference to Tibetan monks, it is only in the heat of a battle that we learn that Quicksilver would survive this fight, "thanks in part to the martial arts he had learned in the company of the Tibetan monks" (68). It was like reading a book written by a tabletop roleplaying gamer: "Oh, and by the way, my character learned martial arts when he was in the Himalayas." Green adds injury to literal insult when he writes that Quicksilver "push[es] a foot into [the creature's] midriff." Perhaps I'm being overly pedantic(and if this were the only instance of Green's poor word choice, you might be right in saying so), but 'midriff' is word without combat connotations. You "kick" in the "stomach"; you do not "push" in the "midriff", no matter how much you're trying to emulate what you suppose to be the polite manners of Victorian style or culture. But I digress -- I'm supposed to be talking about how Quicksilver is a caricature.

When hired by a beautiful woman to find her lost father, Quicksilver is said to be unable to "resist a pretty face, and when that pretty face belonged to a damsel in distress it made any attempt at resistance even more futile" (57). If Green were clever enough to write with an ironic tone, I could swallow this sort of writing. However, while he's not taking himself too seriously, he's also no Pynchon. Although this serves as a femme fatale plot device later on, it's handled poorly. In short, Quicksilver is Moorcock's Bastable without the narrative conceit of time travel to explain his idiosyncracies. As with the secondary history itself, one wonders how such a cultural dinosaur could have survived a century. Even with the continuation of the British Empire, societal change would have been more advanced. Britain before Victoria was very different from Britain after Victoria. The world of Pax Britannica reads mostly like a historical neophyte's idea of what a steampunk universe would look like. And while steampunk doesn't have to be about alternate real-world histories, Pax Britannica is. And it shows what happens to the steampunk aesthetic when history is ignored.

One of the ribbons at the Seattle Steamcon stated that "Steampunk needs historical accuracy like a dirigible needs a goldfish." While this quote, attributed to Steamcon coordinator Diana Vick, is true for convention Cosplay, it is mostly wrong when applied to steampunk literature. Even within a fully secondary world, historical "accuracy" lies at the heart of steampunk narratives being quality instead of quagmire. There must be an inner consistency to the alternate history or the possible world, or the reader cannot negotiate the narrative's virtual spaces. Setting is as important as character, and when both are poorly rendered, as is the case in Unnatural History, the end result is a muddled mess.

At one point Ulysses muses that "there were many unexplained mysteries in the world -- such as who built the giant heads of Easter Island and the mystery of the Whitby mermaid -- and Ulysses had solved some of them in his time, but how Maurice Allardyce had ever made it to inspector he would never know" (48). I feel much the same way about how Jonathan Green got a contract to write not one, but four of these novels. Worse yet, I own all of them, and for the sake of academic research, will likely read them all. I can only hope Green gets better as he goes.

NOTE: El Sombra, The second novel in the Pax Britannica series, was written by Al Ewing, and while it will never be considered literature, it fulfilled all of the hopes I had for Unnatural History without any of the writing faux pas.

Having recently read George Mann's Steampunk adventure, "The Affinity Bridge", I was expecting more of the same in Johnathon Green's "Unatural History".

And it delivered in terms of writing - for me Green is more fluid in style than Mann - and the overall story which cranked along quickly, but not in terms of Steampunk technology, where Mann delved more deeply and thoughtfully.

Overall however, "Unatural History" was a good diversion on a long flight from Johannesburg, with generally pleasant stereotypical characters, more than enough moustache twirling villians, crazy car chases and certainly non-stop action that took us from the sewers of London to a zeppelin flying overhead.

Of course, having only given "Unatural History" 3-stars, clearly a few things grated.

One in particular was hero Ulysses Quicksilver's "sixth sense" for danger. Having that tingle once or twice would be OK, but it was like a clarion call every chapter, chiming just in time for Quicksliver to duck, dodge or defend himself.

The other is logical but really pulled me up in the Steampunk theme - Queen Victoria is celebrating her 160 year reign, so quite naturally the book is set in 1997, which I found distracting because I instantly thought "**that's** not a Steampunk era". Of course, there is no reason the 1990's can't be Steampunk and it certainly makes sense in the timeline of the novel.

Then there were the dinosaurs. Really? I had to put that to one side because it just seemed so superfluous.

Finally, Green mixes Steampunk and current technology but does not really think it through. So we have cars on the streets of London, including Quicksliver's own Silver Phantom, as well as horses. Been there, done that and the horses lost out...which is why we don't see them on the roads today. Electronics are also mentioned, which necessitates quantum mechanics with all that implies. Again, been there, done that and analogue lost out to digital...which is why Apple sells a gazillion iPods and absolutely zero record players. And there are cities on the Moon and Mars, which requires rocket power and lots of it, and that was never going to be Steampunk, no matter how much coal you stoked that boiler with. Plus they fully understand DNA and again, it seemed sideways to a civilisation that's still using gas lighting.

For me this was a bit lazy and while I know "Unatural History" is not high art, and irrespective of whether Green wants this to be Steampunk or otherwise, this haphazard thinking stole a little of the enjoyment for me. (And I will note that I **think** there was an attempt to cover this off with the motivations of the bad guys wanting to cut out the rotten core of the Empire, but even with that things did not make sufficient sense any time you actually stopped to think even a little bit about them.)

So, a good effort as an adventure novel but only Steampunk Lite in terms of technologoy as a supporting cast member.

This book is not high art, and that's probably it's greatest strength. Recalling the derring-do, bizarre settings, and outlandish characters of the old pulps, Pax Britannia: Unnatural History is a steampunk powered rollercoaster of fun that moves along at the pace of a modern action movie. There are a few introspective moments for our hero, but let's face it, this thing is a modern pulp novel and that sort of thing should be limited. Fortunately, our hero spends limited time contemplating his navel, and far more time smashing drug crazed convicts, stopping rampaging dinosaurs, and saving the Queen. Moreover, the novel is lovingly reverant to it's own source material, as evidenced by little touches like the "Challenger section" of the local zoo that houses dinosaurs...

If you want a fun steampunk look at a modern pulp, this book, and hopefully, this series, will provide a nice place to start. At the very least,it should allow you to unplug your brain for a little while and enjoy the ride.

One day a dead man, the next a crime solver and a drinker of cognac, Ulysses Quicksilver has to be one of the more interesting fantasy characters in some time. The story of "Unnatural History" isn't always consuming, not always fun, but it sure is nice to see a character come alive within the pages of a novel. And Ulysses isn't clichéd; he has his vices, as the story tells. And the story ...
A lawyer with a unique name, Screwtape, consults with Ulysses's brother in the opening pages of "Unnatural History." Screwtape is there to tell the brother that all of Ulysses' assets are his. A problem arise: Ulysses, as one would expect, is far from dead, and shows up at the door during this meeting.
Ulysses quickly becomes involved in society again. After disappearing for over a year after an expedition into a mountain, he finds himself involved in a mystery. It seems minor, but the scope is big. A night watchmen at a major museum is murdered. He wasn't just killed; he was killed brutally. The police think a thief did it, but Ulysses thinks something else is afoot--and has many questions. The second mystery comes when a professor at the museum is found to have disappeared as well. "The more he thought about it, the more convinced he became that he had been sent two different crimes committed by two different culprits."
The world of Pax Brittania is different. The queen is in her 160th year of reigning over the still strong British empire, space travel is common, and the sciences have speed ahead at an alarming rate. But, the destitute are more numerous, and the slums darker than ever. The factories have turned much of the empire into wastelands.
The history of this world is described in detail early. Jonathan Green holds nothing back in detailing it.
In Europe Brittania is powerful, even with many enemies like Socialist Germany. However, the true villains of "Unnatural History" come from within the empire.
What follows is more than mystery. "Unnatural History" has plenty of futuristic views, plenty of action, and just the right amount of characterization. It stands as another classic from publisher Abaddon books.

There is little attempt to be original here however if you are looking for just plain action fun and a dash of daring do then you'll be happy enough. The world is interesting but is achieved (I'm being a little unfair here) by mashing together just about every "Victorian" era adventure story you can think of and then adding a little steam punk modernising. Still, I doubt it was ever the intent to create a literary masterpiece. Entertainment is the name of the game and in that sense it is a success..

For some reason, I'm an easy mark for any sort of alternate Victorian Age stuff, so I thought I'd give this novel a spin. I expected something more gritty with a vividly depicted background where we learned in some detail how this world differed from ours. Instead I got the rollicking escapades of Ulysses Quicksilver, dandy and adventurer, a mix of Indiana Jones and James Bond.

There's nothing exactly bad about this book, although the prose is often leaden and the author has a real problem with antecedents. But it's not altogether good, either. It's really best approached if you visualize the events as a cheesy sci-fi movie in the none-too-serious spirit of, say, "The Mummy". Really, the novel is structured as a series of over-the-top set pieces filled with rampaging dinosaurs, fistfights atop of trains, attack zeppelins, and battles with deadly creatures in London's flooded and abandoned Underground. You can almost see how a movie script would line up the shots and what FX would be used.

If you take it in that spirit and expect a lot of "You fiend!"-type dialogue, this makes for a good read. But it's not for the more serious-minded.

Missing for a year and presumed dead, Ulysses Quicksilver returns home and is immediately asked to investigate a murder at the local museum. And Quicksilver is also asked by a young woman to look into the disappearance of her father, who disappeared the night of the murder. But when an incident at the zoo results in the release of several dangerous prehistoric creatures, Quicksilver finds himself facing a conspiracy that threatens the entire Magna Britannia empire.

Set in an alternate reality where Magna Britannia is the dominate nation in the world, Ulysses Quicksilver is the Sherlock Holmes for its 20th century. Clever and resourceful, Quicksilver is a fun and fascinating character. I look forward to reading his further adventures. The story is exciting and action-packed, with a couple unpredictable twists and is incredibly well-written. I could hardly put it down, and finished the book eager to read the next in the series.

Alternate history and science fiction fans alike should enjoy this highly entertaining novel from Abaddon Books.

I will say Mr. Green writes almost decently, or a "*" would have been a high rating. Hackneyed, crazy "alternate" with little to commend it scientific or otherwise. On the other hand, formula writing does enrich family coffers. It demeans the genre of alternate history as non-alternate rubbish. One might argue that the novel tries to be an anti-evolution manifesto, or even just the opposite. Well it is certainly not science or even good engineering. The characters are right out of Holmes, even down to their give-away un-proper names. There is much better alternative history set in the UK, the Isles specifically, or in various parts of the old empire Some of these do amazingly well, and are fresh, new ideas with authors understanding their story that they have set into some 'terrain" with its own history. At the widest level, this one barely qualifies. As Londonesque alternate history, I can't give this one the dignity of being last. Such a "rating" is one of which this book is not good enough to be. I can't raise this one to even a low level it does not deserve.

Sorry folks if I didn't provide enough story line or information. I won't waste my time. Save your money. There is just too much good SF out there, alternate history or not.