Andy Remic Soul Stealers (Book Three of the Clockwork Vampire Chronicles)
Angry Robot book time again (I read the books in clusters - this is the second last in this cluster):
How does one talk about a third book? First, one gives a warning. This review may contain spoilers if you haven't read the earlier books. Here, let me give you some anti-spoiler space.
What else does one say? If you liked the first two, you will like this? That's true in this instance. It has the same type of imagery and colour ('like ash confetti at a corpse wedding' works so beautifully in a sword and sorcery, over-the-top, steampunk vampire world). It has the same strange universe. It even has some of the same characters. Since I enjoyed the first two books, it was almost a given I would like this one. But what is it I like, besides the completion of the storylines I've been following and the wonderfully and depressingly absurd universe? (I still want to see Andy Remic and James Enge on the same panel at a convention - more reading of both writers just reinforces this view)
This book starts where the previous one left off (rather unsurprisingly, given that the last book left us all hanging off a vast cliff) with the Vampire Warlords (beings sickeningly between gods and humans) having been summoned. The writing is on the wall for humanity. The great hero Kell has been pushed too far. Most of the vachines (clockwork vampires) are dead, killed to raise the Vampire Warlords, and almost the first thing the Warlords do is crate a vampire army, using the knowledge of the once-human to dominate, instantly. Humanity is doomed to diminish, in vile slavery. On the way down, there will be much blood and guts and screams of agony. That's the way these things are.
All the rest is doom and fight and adventure. Of course it is. That's the kind of boko it is. There's les humour in this last book in the trilogy, but more than enough derring-do to make up. There's also a band of heroes that is nicely mismatched, with Kell wanting to save his granddaughter's honour and his granddaughter wanting something quite different and… I think you'd better read it for yourself.
How does one talk about a third book? First, one gives a warning. This review may contain spoilers if you haven't read the earlier books. Here, let me give you some anti-spoiler space.
What else does one say? If you liked the first two, you will like this? That's true in this instance. It has the same type of imagery and colour ('like ash confetti at a corpse wedding' works so beautifully in a sword and sorcery, over-the-top, steampunk vampire world). It has the same strange universe. It even has some of the same characters. Since I enjoyed the first two books, it was almost a given I would like this one. But what is it I like, besides the completion of the storylines I've been following and the wonderfully and depressingly absurd universe? (I still want to see Andy Remic and James Enge on the same panel at a convention - more reading of both writers just reinforces this view)
This book starts where the previous one left off (rather unsurprisingly, given that the last book left us all hanging off a vast cliff) with the Vampire Warlords (beings sickeningly between gods and humans) having been summoned. The writing is on the wall for humanity. The great hero Kell has been pushed too far. Most of the vachines (clockwork vampires) are dead, killed to raise the Vampire Warlords, and almost the first thing the Warlords do is crate a vampire army, using the knowledge of the once-human to dominate, instantly. Humanity is doomed to diminish, in vile slavery. On the way down, there will be much blood and guts and screams of agony. That's the way these things are.
All the rest is doom and fight and adventure. Of course it is. That's the kind of boko it is. There's les humour in this last book in the trilogy, but more than enough derring-do to make up. There's also a band of heroes that is nicely mismatched, with Kell wanting to save his granddaughter's honour and his granddaughter wanting something quite different and… I think you'd better read it for yourself.
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