Kyle’s Reviews > The Difference Engine: A Novel > Status Update
Kyle
is on page 70 of 492
A high point in steampunk literature, nearly thirty years later merely a sputtering genre, this narrative takes it time to get going. Sybil seems stuck on the Gibsonian Street while her partner Mick has all the earmarks of a mirrorshaded hustler. Some world-building business thrown in about Sam Houston trying to retake Texas and other spot-the-celebrity mid-nineteenth century personalities like a kino-addicted Keats.
— Jun 24, 2019 05:57PM
Like flag
Kyle’s Previous Updates
Kyle
is on page 490 of 492
Oh ho, it was the Narratron all along, recounting the discoveries of Laurence Oliphant, an unsatisfactory end of Mallory’s Leviathan, something dark from Sybil’s past plus a lot of other random Modus thrown in at the end just because they don’t really fit anywhere else. And the conceit that preceding pages were about a computer a century ahead of its time becoming sentient is undone by the authors’ afterword.
— Sep 18, 2019 10:59AM
Kyle
is on page 420 of 492
Thank god Mallory’s overlong ordeal is done, to what end remains unclear, and the narrative can attempt to braid together the many frayed storylines as Laurence Oliphant gets reintroduced. He seems to have his wits about him tracking down clues (like Sybil!) scattered about earlier iterations. He brings in his Mikado-envoy friend Mori, and there is a glimmer of Gibson’s “why Japan?” in Mori’s modernizing aspirations.
— Sep 06, 2019 11:19PM
Kyle
is on page 350 of 492
Slogging through the Mallory saga with little hope of having the character of Charles Babbage make an appearance as the palaeontologist turned action hero makes his way across a stinked-up London and into the mob of anarchist calling it Babylondon. At this point, why even wonder what the story is about as page after page displays anti-Dickensian inhumanity that couldn’t solely be the work of a before-its-time Engine.
— Aug 28, 2019 05:36PM
Kyle
is on page 280 of 492
Sticking with Mallory, for better or for worse, as he goes from riches to rags while London devolves into a catastrophic chaos. It would be clever to see if the severe stink was directly the result of an early advent of engine computing, but way too many pages were given over to his sexual escapades with Hetty, very loosely connected to whatshername Gerard who must be featured in a more cohesive story somewhere else.
— Aug 11, 2019 04:37AM
Kyle
is on page 210 of 492
Worries that there wouldn’t be enough story to spread out over this alternate past have been replaced with dread that there is now too much, crammed into a never ending chapter that follow self-made Mallory to his undoing. Somehow it connects to the murder of Mick and Lady Ada’s nefarious double-life, but it doesn’t look like Sybil will be seen anytime soon, unless she is the one sending threatening notes to Mallory.
— Jul 14, 2019 11:51PM
Kyle
is on page 140 of 492
A bit worried, by the end of the first ‘iteration’ and the start of the second, that the whole book would be steampunkish vignettes of disposable characters while the prototype AI known as ‘Engines’ kept clacking away at the real story. Mallory’s rise in fortune and his involvement with journalist/spy Oliphant at least demonstrates that all the stories so far will be continuous and connected, prompting other worries.
— Jul 01, 2019 05:52PM
