SciFi and Fantasy eBook Club discussion

Happy June Everyone. So far I've only read the introduction so I haven't formed any kind of opinion yet ..... :)

The intro kind of turned me off a bit -- seemed too pretentious to me. I'm maybe 10-15% into the actual book now, with mixed feelings: there are some interesting things going on, but so far no characters I care about (including the narrator).

I finished the book. I think I enjoyed the "pretentious" parts more than the action-adventure that comes later.

I finished it today. I bought it awhile back and didn't realize it had been published in the 80's. I never really got into it. The plot never seemed to be going anywhere, just wandered all over. The narrator never knew what was going on and neither did I. And unfortunately, I just didn't care. Not only was the intro pretentious, but I thought the afterward, written by someone else, was even more so.

I don't want to put anyone off from reading it though; in fact I'm really curious to hear what other people think.

I finished it last night and I think I concur with you, Donna, about it wandering all over the place. The author kept introducing plot element after plot element and it just got messy. By the end I was reading to finish it.

While I admired the author's ability to emulate the tone of a Victorian author and paint the story's images in my mind, that was unfortunately countered by a lack of characters I cared about and a plot I couldn't buy into. I had the feeling that the only character for whom the author had any compassion was the dog -- in fact I wonder if the author would have preferred to have written an ending where the Brown Leather Man actually succeeded in his final goal.

Other negatives for me: the idea that one man had developed so many different ground-breaking inventions, the general lack of any true science behind any of those inventions and other pseudo-science aspects in the story (in effect making this a fantasy book, not a sci-fi book), and I didn't care for the constant use of long monologues by various characters to explain the plot, making me feel like I was watching a campy B movie.

Heh...I just realized that "ground-breaking inventions" was an unintended pun. :-)

I just finished it this morning. I actually enjoyed it. The story might not have been very plausible, but it was quite an entertaining adventure.

I'm really battling to finish it - on my 3rd book since I started it :(

Bigal-sa wrote: "I'm really battling to finish it - on my 3rd book since I started it :("

Glad I'm not the only one who does that. I don't think I had quite as much trouble with this book, perhaps, though it was a bit of a tough go for me.

Well I've finally managed to finish it. If this is one of the defining works of 'steampunk', I'll give the genre a miss. (btw, can anyone tell me what's punkish about the book?)

Well I've finally managed to finish it. If this is one of the defining works of 'steampunk', I'll give the genre a miss. (btw, can anyone tell me what's punkish about the book?)

I don't think this is considered a "defining" work of steampunk, merely one of the first modern examples.

I think The Difference Engine would probably be considered the "defining" work, but it's not that clear-cut.

Cherie Priest, Scott Westerfeld, and Cassandra Clare are probably the most visible current proponents.