Shadows Against the Empire

by Ralph E. Vaughan

It is 1882, and from fiery Mercury to the frigid moons of the Outer Planets, a Pax Britannica holds sway. Were it not for Britain’s dominance in trade, technology and space travel, Earth’s other major colonial powers would wage wars that would consume them all, and end the peace and prosperity that stretches across the Solar System. On Mars, however, an ancient evil stirs in a dead city, dark powers emerging from the dimensions to which they were banished in primal times. As this evil force extends its reach from planet to planet, the ever-precarious balance of power begins to shift, endangering not only Britain’s Empire of Steam and Steel, but the entire Solar System and all its inhabited planets. Only a small band of dedicated men and women stand between Civilisation and the Dark Gods of Elder Mars. From a forbidden city in the Martian antarctic wastes to the steaming upland jungles of Venus to the most dangerous quarters of Constantinople and London, they will do whatever they must to fight the shadows rising against the Empire, to serve Queen and Solar System.

Genres: Steampunk, Science Fiction, Alternate History, Adventure, Space Opera, Pulp

247 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 1, 2013

About the author

Ralph E. Vaughan is the author of several books combining the worlds of Sherlock Holmes and HP Lovecraft, such as "The Adventure of the Ancient Gods" (first story to combine Holmes & Lovecraft), "The Dreaming Detective." and "Sherlock Holmes and the Terror Out of Time." A longtime fan of the steampunk movement, he expressed that fondness by writing "Shadows Against the Empire," an epic Victorian interplanetary adventure, followed by its sequel "Amidst Dark Satanic Mills." He is also the author of "HP Lovecraft in the Comics," an exhaustive examination of the works Lovecraft's works as they were adapted into the medium of comic books, and "Reflections on Elder Egypt." a collection of essays about various aspects of Ancient Egypt and how that lost civilization is viewed by modern culture. He is the author of "Paws & Claws: A Three Dog Mystery," first in the Paws & Claws Series, in which three amazing dogs protect their neighborhood, thwart the evil plans of the nefarious Feral Gang, and occasionally save the world. This was followed by additional books, including "K-9 Blues" and "The Death and Life of an American Dog." He is a long-time resident of Chula Vista, California, which is the setting of the Paws & Claws Series. He has been married for more than 40 years, and has two children, a daughter who is a playwright, and a son who is a conductor for the BNSF.

Reviews

[Clay Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

A first rate interplanetary steampunk adventure.

[Peggy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A terrific tale of derring-do set against the interplanetary British Empire. The story features an interesting trio of characters: a British Captain, his loyal and fearless Martian comrade-in-arms who has adopted the customs of the British whole-heartedly (well, his heart was made by the British), and the cool and beautiful Lady Cynthia.

I loved the prose in this Steampunk adventure, layered with nods to both the Victorian era and Greek mythology. It's a wonderful place to inhabit for a few hours. I'm hoping there's going to be more to follow.

For more, see my blog posting: http://my-book-diary.blogspot.com/201...

[C.A. A. Powell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great Steampunk adventure set in an alternative British Empire with advanced steam driven machinery and airships. We follow the adventures of Captain Folkestone and his Martian accomplice, Sergeant Felix Hand. The British Empire is policing colonies on Mars and Venus in the year of 1882. It's a wonderfully weird and wacky adventure of a retro sci-fi world from our past. An alternative British Empire in a bizarre space age. The image of Victorian machinery (iron and steam) in a space age dreamed of by people with futuristic imaginations of the late 19th and early 20th Century. H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burrows type Sci-Fi. A story of ancient Dark Gods known to Martians and Venusians from their entwined pasts yet not to Humans who are new comers building empires and colonies upon both planets. The restless natives of these colonised worlds are resurrecting taboo old Gods. Those that must not be spoken of. Their aim (The Dark Gods) to destroy the alternative British Empire of 1882 and bring vengeance upon humanity. Only the dashing Captain Folkestone and Sergeant Hand can thwart the evil as they travel on a quest from Mars to Venus following leads where humanoid and reptilian Venusians live. Plus some work back on Earth, in London, by Scotland Yard’s Chief Inspector Ethan Slaughter as he searches among London's immigrant population of Chinese, Laskers, Martians and Venusian workers in a quest for secrets of the Dark Gods too.

Great adventure for all fans of Steampunk Sci-Fi where even Victorian London's back streets are awash with inter-planetary multi-culturalism. The whole story moves well with its wonderful alternative Victorian feel combined with retro steam-powered machinery from a mythical, dreamed of, age.

The Last Days of Thunder Child

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a great read for those of us liking Steampunk. An alternate British Empire that along with several other countries has made their presence known on several planets in the solar system in the year 1882. A dark evil has been reborn on Mars and threatens to force itself on the rest of the planets in the solar system. Captain Robert Folkestone (Human) and Sergeant Felix Hand (Martian) are tasked with finding the reason for the destruction of a 'patrol steamer' over one of the old Martian cities, Old Cydonia. When they see waves of energy being directed at them from the hands of an old Martian sitting in the sand they realize that this will not be a normal investigation. This is a very well written book, the characters are well thought out as well as the various worlds where this takes place. If you like Steampunk or if this is your first venture into it this is a very good book. I'd highly recommend it to anyone.

[Cozette R · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a copy of this book through Goodreads First Reads. I enjoyed it! This story is about 2 British military men in the future. The galaxy has been explored and there has been found different races on the different planets. Ships can travel in between the planets. But the old Gods of these planets are not happy, and they want to rule again. One of the gods possess the body of a martian and tries to control him to rule. The story goes through how Captain Folkestone and Sergeant Hand go up against the dark God. It is treacherous as they go through all the clues trying to stay alive, in some instances to over come the evil trying to rule the universe. I did find some spelling errors in this book. But over all it was good. If Ralph E. Vaughan comes out with another book following this one, I would love to read it. Thank you to the author for sharing this book with me.

[Ralph · Rating 5 out of 5]

Trouble is brewing on Mars and Venus in 1882, an ancient evil returning to establish a reign of terror. All that stands in their way are brave men and women, the best the British Empire has. It's an exciting and imaginative novel.

[Alissa Nolan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was not really my type of book. I have not read a lot of "steam punk", but sort of expected more science explanations. If you like Edgar Rice Burroughs or William Gibson, I think this might be the book for you.

[Daniel Shellenbarger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Back when people knew a little about space but not a lot, they had some funny ideas about the way that the solar system worked. Often, it was presumed that Venus was a hothouse world of tropical jungles (after all, it was about the same size as the Earth but a little closer to the sun) and that Mars was home to civilization clinging to survival amidst a long gradual cooling off (after all, it was further from the sun and "clearly" had canals). That Earth alone should be habitable and inhabited was unthinkable. It was, to be honest, a glorious vision, full of the hope of adventure, exploration, and romance, and the pulp fiction serials of the 1920's to 1950's took full advantage of that with stories of Barsoom and Perelandra and Mongo among others. Then freaking science had to go and ruin it.

It's no coincidence that planetary romances (note, if you've never heard this term before (and given the dearth of modern examples, that's totally fair), it has nothing to do with the "romance" genre as it is known today, planetary romances are stories where a character ends up on an alien world, sometimes through magic or astral projection (Burroughs' Barsoom/Venus books) and sometimes through technology (Flash Gordon, Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet) and has adventures there (which often do result in romance of the other sort) kind of like the Japanese isekai genre; I don't know why "romance" but I assume it goes back to the days when romance was another word for fictional/fantastic story), so popular in the interwar and post-War War 2 period, basically ceased to exist in the 1960's as probes showed the cruel reality: brutal inhospitable lifeless orbs. However, as steampunk and other fantasized-historical settings became popular more recently, we've seen a curious reemergence of the genre. Not, perhaps, with the popularity it once enjoyed and with more of a fantasy than science fiction bent, but with plenty of the same fevered imagination behind it.

I've read a number of stories along that line: Philip Reeves' Larklight, Michael Martinez's The Daedalus Incident, and David Levine's Arabella of Mars all come to mind (I do not mention Stirling's Lords of Creation for two reasons: first it doesn't have a steampunk/19th century setting and space is still a void in his universe, just a void with more inhabited worlds close at hand, and second, at least in the first two books, I felt like he succeeded excellently in producing a pair of Cold War-era planetary romances, so since I'm about to give reasons why all three of these failed to live up to my hopes, I'm leaving him out of it). All presenting a fantasized version of the solar system with aether or airs between worlds allowing vaguely alchemical/fantastic airships to travel between living worlds home to strange and exotic alien cultures, usually set sometime in some variety of alternate 19th century (I suppose a more modern setting would be less distinguishable from basic space opera as awesome as Arleigh Burke destroyers patrolling the spacelanes sounds (well, except the way Stirling did it...), but how about a World War 2-esque setting in this sort of universe, there's definitely potential there).

I promise there's a point to all this, so just bear with me a bit longer. My problem with all this is... none of the authors I've read up until now has succeeded in that most important element in any story: treating it like it's real and true to its time. This is a problem I have with a lot of steampunk in general, in Arabella of Mars, for instance, the characters all seem too modern, all the protagonists check all the boxes of correct beliefs to placate modern tastes, but the result is characters that feel alien to the setting and the focus of the story doesn't reflect the actual driving issues of the day but modern concerns. Likewise, in the Daedalus Incident and its sequels, the story is divided between multiple universes, a realistic futuristic universe and a Napoleonic War era fantastic universe, which is cool conceptually, but ends up becoming frustrating as one universe is far more interesting than the other but for the plot to work, that universe is shoved into the background a LOT, with most of the important stuff happening around the realistic universe side. As if the author wasn't confident enough to tell a story wholly in his other universe and needed to give it a realistic framing device to make it "serious enough". As for Larklight it had tree-people (shudders) and the world-building was kind of all over the place (which is fine for a middle grade fantasy but not very satisfying) and by the third book, the story had jumped the shark badly enough that even as a middle grade fantasy it didn't really work anymore.

ALL of that just to say, Mr. Vaughn has crafted a story in the vein of steampunk planetary romance, which doesn't commit those flaws. It takes itself seriously, the characters seem true to their setting and callings, it doesn't harp on about the "flaws" of its era as a modern person would see it, the world-building is solid (with plenty of the fantastic and imaginative without seeming ridiculous), and it has an intriguing story confidently told. Vaughn does occasionally give in to making references (Burroughs, for instance, is referenced tangentially), which I'm always in two minds about (yes, it can be amusing, but the butterfly effect suggests that the more different your universe is, the less that people from one universe should make an appearance in another, or at least that they should generally be unlike the version we know).

The basic story is that British Captain Folkestone and his Martian highlander non-com Sergeant Hand are trouble-solvers for the British Admiralty, doing little jobs to nip nasty problems in the bud around the Solar System. They're called in to investigate a curious situation on Mars where a Martian has attacked a patrol airboat utilizing what can, for lack of a better word, only be described as magic, as silly as that seems. This starts them on a hunt to uncover a conspiratorial web involving relics of the ancient (and loathed) Martian gods, the illegal dream-spice trade, and the fates of three worlds. It's a fun, fast-moving story with plenty of influence from Burroughs (and others), but also better-written than many of its inspirations. My only downside is that Vaughn appears to have only written this book and its sequel in this series (and some related poetry) and since (this was written around a decade ago) moved on to other things. Still, if, like me, you crave a good steampunk interplanetary romance, well, as far as I've read, Vaughn's the best option to date.