FREE THE STRANGE AFFAIR OF SPRING HEELED JACK PDF

Mark Hodder | 373 pages | 01 Sep 2010 | Pyr | 9781616142407 | English | United States Burton & Swinburne in The Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack - PYR

Sir Richard Francis Burton—explorer, linguist, scholar, and swordsman; his reputation tarnished; his career in tatters; his former partner missing and probably dead. Algernon Charles Swinburne—unsuccessful poet and follower of de Sade; for whom pain is pleasure, and brandy is ruin! They stand The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack a crossroads in their lives and are caught in the epicenter of an empire torn by conflicting forces: Engineers transform the landscape with bigger, faster, noisier, and dirtier technological wonders; Eugenicists develop specialist animals to provide unpaid labor; Libertines oppose repressive laws and demand a society based on beauty and creativity; while the Rakes push the boundaries of human behavior to the limits with magic, drugs, and anarchy. The two men are sucked into the perilous depths of this moral and ethical vacuum when Lord Palmerston commissions Burton to investigate assaults on young women committed by a weird apparition known as Spring Heeled Jack, and to find out why werewolves are terrorizing London's East End. Their investigations lead them to one of the defining events of the age, and the terrifying possibility that the world they inhabit shouldn't exist at all! With this one book, Hodder has put himself on the genre map. Hodder has brilliantly combined various genre staples - time travel, alternate reality, steampunk - into something you've never quite seen before. His mid-nineteenth-century Britain The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack steam- driven velocipedes, rotorchairs, verbally abusive messenger parrots, a pneumatic rail system, and robotic street cleaners. The book is incredibly ambitious, and the author pulls it off like an The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack pro: not only is the setting exciting and fresh, the story is thrilling and full of surprises. Mark Hodder definitely knows his stuff and has given us steam opera at its finest A great, increasingly complex, plot, some fine characters, and invention that never flags! It gets better and better, offering clues to some of Victorian London's strangest mysteries. This is the best debut novel I have read in ages. I don't think there are very many other ways to put it. His plotting is intricate and intriguing, his voice is superb, the characters are engaging and original, and all of it is so unexpectedly fun. There is no better adjective to describe such all-around greatness. Don't come into this book expecting any less. Hodder has arrayed in his book the full panoply of steampunk riffs… Layering this cake with a frosting of mystery, suspense, and time-travel shenanigans, he has created a compulsively readable romp that recalls the best of Tim Powers and James Blaylock… and the plot unfolds with a The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack cleverness. A former BBC writer, editor, journalist, and Web producer, Mark has worked in all the new and traditional medias and was based in London for most of his working life untilwhen he relocated to Valencia in Spain to de-stress and write novels. He can most often be found at the base of a palm tree, hammering at a laptop. Mark has a degree in cultural studies and loves British history toin particulargood food, cutting-edge gadgets, cult TV ITC forever! Sign up for the Pyr Newsletter Your privacy is important to us. We will NOT share your email address with anyone! London, Reviews "The usual superlatives for really clever fantasy imaginative, mind-bending, phantasmagorical aren't nearly big enough for this debut novel. Buy This Book. The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack (Burton & Swinburne, book 1) by Mark Hodder

A case he'd read about from two or three years ago; something concerning a girl being attacked by -- by a ghost which escaped by taking prodigious leaps -- by a thing that breathed fire -- by a creature known as -- Spring Heeled Jack. Taking the lead role is the explorer and writer Sir Richard Francis Burton. Part steampunk, part alternate history, with a liberal dollop of detective thriller, it is a melting pot that has the potential to produce something tasty, or a nauseating mess. From the outset, it will be evident to anyone reasonably well versed in British history, that what Mark Hodder presents is a lovingly re-imaged version of the Victorian Age. The life, and subsequent times, of Sir Richard Francis Burton, almost immediately diverges from established history. In the main due to the activities of Spring Heeled Jack; a character who beats up Burton early on, or from his own perspective, somewhat later. The central premise here is one man, Edward Oxford, attempting to erase a stain on the history of his family, using a time suit of his own design. What Oxford wants to do is stop his infamous ancestor from ever making what was, in true history, an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Queen Victoria. Unfortunately, the mission goes disastrously wrong, accidentally causing the demise of the monarch. What follows is an out and out romp, where The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack is always more important than substance. Sir Richard Francis Burton, who becomes the King's Agent, is tasked with finding Spring Heeled Jack, and putting an end to his unpleasant activities, many of which involve assaulting young girls. Even in its altered state -- for example, Brunel invented geothermal power about three hundred years before its time -- what should have been Victorian England is well realised. In particular the squalor of the age, and its acceptance by a populace who knew their place. In Mark Hodder's version there are, among other inventions, steam-powered gyroscopically stabilised velocipede bicycles, and armchairs attached to personal gyrocopters. Spring Heeled Jack, literally bouncing around the era, and losing his grip on sanity by the day, at first attempts to put things right. But he is eventually driven to concentrate on ensuring his own survival. Even if that means raping his own ancestor! Most of the ideas work to propel the story along, although some trip it up a little. The joke of having genetically altered parrot messengers predisposed toward abusing sender and recipient quickly became old, as did the notion of door-to-door mail delivery dogs. Who would want to receive mail that had dog slobber all over it. Rather than sprinkling the story with added fun, as I have no doubt was the author's intention, sometimes I got the feeling that he'd become carried away, and where the little things were concerned, was poorly served by his editor. Tongue-in-cheek and mostly light-hearted, this is the kind of book where disbelief is sometimes suspended by a thread, and details are intentionally overlooked. Anyone wanting to know exactly how Florence Nightingale manages to graft brains together, or the technicalities of the advanced life-support mechanism that allows Isambard Kingdom The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack to survive his own death, will be sadly disappointed. Similarly, there is no attempt to explain why or how some of the The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack minds of a generation descend into a clinical madness which, in true history, was not seen until the evil of Josef Mengele. But as time travel -- re-imaged history -- steampunk novels go, this was a blast of alternate Victoriana, peppered with a cast who The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack from credible to Dick Van Dyke and back again. An appendix is provided in which the author helpfully gives short explanations as to the differences between his fiction and the real lives of those esteemed The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack whose names he has borrowed. Quite how much longevity there is for Burton, the King's Agent, and Swinburne, the masochistic poet, remains to be seen. But I can recommend this title to readers who like pre-information age adventure, laced with a few smiles and topped off with very British eccentricity. In reality, he's an English bloke who lives on an island, reading, writing and throwing chips to the seagulls. Drop by his web site at www. If you find any errors, typos or anything else worth mentioning, please send it to editor sfsite. A former BBC writer, editor, journalist, and Web producer, he has worked in all the new and traditional medias and was based in London for most of his working life untilwhen he relocated to Valencia in Spain to de-stress and write novels. He can most often be found at The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack base of a palm tree, hammering at a laptop. Mark has a degree in cultural studies and loves British history toin particulargood food, cutting-edge gadgets, cult TV ITC forever! A review by Nathan Brazil 'A memory stirred. The Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack - Wikipedia

The honeycomb of narrow, uneven passages, bordered by the most decrepit and crowded tenements The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack the city, was flowing with raw sewage and rubbish of every description, including occasional corpses. The stench was overpowering and both men had vomited more than once. Time and again the two The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack were approached by girls barely out of childhood, who materialised out of the fog with matted hair and bare feet, smeared with excrement up to their The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack, covered only by a rough coat or a thin, torn dress or a man's shirt which hung loosely over their bones; who offered themselves for a few coppers; who lowered the price when refused; who begged and wheedled and finally cursed viciously when the men pushed past. Time and again they were approached by boys and men in every variety of torn and filthy apparel, who demanded and bullied and threatened and finally, when the pistols appeared, spat and swore and sidled away. Please confirm, arse-face. Message ends. Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Other editions. Enlarge cover. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. London, Sir Richard Francis Burton—explorer, linguist, scholar, and swordsman; his reputation tarnished; his career in tatters; his former partner missing and probably dead. Algernon Charles Swinburne—unsuccessful poet and follower of de Sade; for whom pain is pleasure, and brandy is ruin! They stand at a crossroads in their lives and are caught in the epicenter of an e London, They stand at a crossroads in their lives and are caught in the epicenter of an empire torn by conflicting forces: Engineers transform the landscape with bigger, faster, noisier, and dirtier technological wonders; Eugenicists develop specialist animals to provide unpaid labor; Libertines oppose repressive laws and demand a society based on beauty and creativity; while the Rakes push the boundaries of human behavior to the limits with magic, drugs, and anarchy. The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack two men are sucked into the perilous depths of this moral and ethical vacuum when Lord Palmerston commissions Burton to investigate assaults on young women committed by a weird apparition known as Spring Heeled Jack, and to find out why werewolves are terrorizing London's East End. Their investigations lead them to one of the defining events of the age, and the terrifying possibility that the world they inhabit shouldn't exist at all! Get A Copy. Paperbackpages. Published April 1st by Snowbooks first published More Details Original Title. London, EnglandUnited Kingdom. Philip K. Dick Award Other Editions Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. May 20, Stephen rated it really liked it Shelves: punkedscience-fictionsherlockianaward-nominee-philip-k-dickebooks, mysteryalternative-history. This super debut novel is like a sweet, dainty cup of mild English tea In other words, a great blend of prim, proper and the freakishly bizarre Set in in an Victorian Albertian England, Mark Hodder has created one of the most enticingly strange and intriguing steampunk worlds I have come a This super debut novel is like a sweet, dainty cup of mild English tea Set in in an Victorian Albertian England, Mark Hodder has created one of the most enticingly strange and intriguing steampunk worlds I have come across in my literary travels. Charles Darwin has all but murdered religion, London is choking on the pollution that is the byproduct of its runaway industrial innovations and the parliament-controlled government is a powder-keg of factions. Socially, we have the Libertines who adhere to a morally dubious celebration of freedom calling for a society without restrictive laws that celebrates beauty, art and the freeing of humanity from the burdens of social conventions. The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack are darker, more sexually deviant and far more callous. Sir Richard Francis Burton The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack Algernon Charles Swinburne is a clever, morally casual libertine poet who has a serious pain fetish and digs nothing more than a really firm flogging of the bottom At the The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack time, a group of child-stealing loup-garous aka, fancy talk for werewolves are terrorizing the poorer sections of London and snatching young members of the League of Chimney Sweeps. Richard and his almost trusty sidekick Algy begin to wonder if the two series of events might be connected What do they find? This man has deft, story-crafting chops and is sure to make his presence felt in years to come. Except for a bit of slippage in the last 50 pages where the story seemed a bit out of control, Hodder maintains a firm grasp on his The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack. Also, he does something that I have never seen before in a steampunk novel. There are some things the book could have done better. I loved the two main characters, but I thought they could have been a little better developed. Also, as wonderfully put together as the plot was, I thought the very end was a bit rushed and felt a little like Hodder had to tourniquet the climax because he was afraid of story gush and needed to get things tied off and wrapped up. Still, an incredibly impressive debut. View all 18 comments. Leviathan or create a new world entirely i. Retribution FallsMark Hodder realizes the fullest potential of the steampunk genre, blending several historical figures and events together to create a fascinating alternate The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack. While some parts of the story are disturbing enough to make even George R R Martin cringe, the novel remains unputdownable throughout. Can't wait for the next installment! View all 26 comments. View all 15 comments. I dug Albertan England, but the changes from the Victorian England I am familiar with were too outrageous, too far beyond what even my whacked-out imagination could accept. I dug the loups-garousbut there were too many of them, and their spontaneous wolf-man combustion was one pseudo-Sci-Fi step too far for me to suspend my disbelief. But even that wasn't enough for Hodder. No, no, no. He had to give us a newsboy, nicknamed Quips so cleverwho just happens to be a young Oscar Wilde. The revelation of Wilde's identity came upon his first meeting with a poet named Algy a couple of paragraphs away from the books only use of the word "perambulator. I dug the "new novella" at the heart of the tale -- Part Two: Being the True History of Spring Heeled Jack -- and would love to have seen all of Hodder's energy poured into that history. As a novella, it might have been nearly as good as H. Wells ' The Invisible Manbut then there's Part One and Three and The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack Conclusion and the Appendix, and there is an excess of plot and action that is just begging to be streamlined and morphed into a radio play odd, I know, but I kept hearing the story in my head with the crackling overlay of an old- time radio. I wanted to mess with it and adapt it, or beg Hodder to keep it simple and short, but he was too in love with his own cleverness, and that hurt the literary experience if not the entertainment experience. I dug The Mad Marquess and even dug his Mr. Belljar alter-ego, but the way he became the damn dirty ape of Burton's nightmares was Nightengale that was required to make it work. I dug Spring Heeled Jack, and I loved the way we watched his loose-ends tie up, but I wanted him to be smarter than he was. Perhaps that's not fair, though. The timeline was already irrevocably fucked. Still, "heroic" brutality was refreshing, and it The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack him feel more like James Bond than Sherlock Holmes. I dug most of the technological steampunk elements, but I grew thoroughly weary of the eugenic steampunk elements. Again, Wells did it better when he was writing straight up Sci-Fi in the Victorian Era than any steampunk writers can do today when they ape the era for their stories. Herbert George, what would you make of steampunk? I dug the hint of more tales with Burton and Swinburne, but I think I would rather spend some time in Damascus with Isabel Arundell instead. I dug The Strange Affair of Spring-heeled Jackbut it was too much of a good thing and not enough of a great thing, and the only way to get to the great would have been to decrease the good because too much good winds up being just okay. I wonder if Burton and Swinburne will take on Jack the Ripper next? Seems appropriate, and what would the Ripper be in a timeline so fantastically altered? That could actually bring me back to Hodder's Albertan past. I'll cross my fingers and toes. View all 5 comments. This was a crazy, fun book. I could imagine this book would surely drive some people crazy, but I really enjoyed it even while recognizing it has some flaws. The main characters, Burton and Swinburne, are two of the aforementioned real people from history.