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rachelini's review against another edition
2.0
I've learned that military steampunk doesn't do it for me. I also discovered after that this follows another series, which explains why some things felt underexplained.
majkia's review against another edition
2.0
Did Not Finish. Couldn't get into this and the whaling was horrible.
endlessmidnight's review
3.0
I found this quite enjoyable to a degree. Such as the way that the relationship between Elizabeth and Julia is the one which is the most important. And the secrets behind their choices.
But something really lacked, such as the fact that almost no answers were even provided. Even till the end, as to why this began or why Julia left.
However I liked the storyline and how Elizabeth was capable and strong. She was able to carry the story although I didn’t really got close to her, this book didn’t really challenge her ideals and her character. I didn’t really know the extension of her personality and how much she will go.
But the world was so unexplained, it didn’t feel like a time period but didn’t clearly set itself apart. And the world could use some explanations as to how it became like that, since it seems to be an alternate version of the nineteen century.
But the early moments got to me. Such as how she cared for Julia and their relationship for being simple, real and easy. And the way the plot was set up was entertaining and gripping.
However the ending didn’t really allow much of any answers or real development. And felt more like a prequel than an actual book. Since Elizabeth remains a flat character throughout.
But something really lacked, such as the fact that almost no answers were even provided. Even till the end, as to why this began or why Julia left.
However I liked the storyline and how Elizabeth was capable and strong. She was able to carry the story although I didn’t really got close to her, this book didn’t really challenge her ideals and her character. I didn’t really know the extension of her personality and how much she will go.
But the world was so unexplained, it didn’t feel like a time period but didn’t clearly set itself apart. And the world could use some explanations as to how it became like that, since it seems to be an alternate version of the nineteen century.
But the early moments got to me. Such as how she cared for Julia and their relationship for being simple, real and easy. And the way the plot was set up was entertaining and gripping.
However the ending didn’t really allow much of any answers or real development. And felt more like a prequel than an actual book. Since Elizabeth remains a flat character throughout.
abutler's review
adventurous
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.25
spikegelato's review against another edition
4.0
3.5 out of 5 stars
My thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.
Fresh off her battle with the International Patent Court, Elizabeth Barnabus finds herself working on behalf of that very organization that brought her so much trouble in the past. She sets sail to investigate the disappearance of an airship that went down in the Atlantic.
The concept of the worldwide alliance that maintains world peace at the cost of technological advancement continues to be a fascinating one. This novel explores the parts of the world untouched by this alliance and the consequences of unrestrained progress.
Having raced through and enjoyed Rod Duncan’s previous trilogy, I was excited to see what new direction he takes with Elizabeth in this new series set in the same world. Sure enough, Duncan has crafted a solid adventure story that featured some superb scenes and passages. I remain impressed by Duncan’s skills as a writer. His prose is clean, readable, and rich. There’s a great theatricality infused into his stories that make the mundane seem grand.
My main issues with the story had to do with the third act, where some lulls in pacing emerge and some steam is lost from the first parts of the book. Overall, though, this is another enjoyable adventure featuring a great protagonist and set of side characters. I look forward to seeing what comes next.
See this review and others at The Speculative Shelf.
My thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.
Fresh off her battle with the International Patent Court, Elizabeth Barnabus finds herself working on behalf of that very organization that brought her so much trouble in the past. She sets sail to investigate the disappearance of an airship that went down in the Atlantic.
The concept of the worldwide alliance that maintains world peace at the cost of technological advancement continues to be a fascinating one. This novel explores the parts of the world untouched by this alliance and the consequences of unrestrained progress.
Having raced through and enjoyed Rod Duncan’s previous trilogy, I was excited to see what new direction he takes with Elizabeth in this new series set in the same world. Sure enough, Duncan has crafted a solid adventure story that featured some superb scenes and passages. I remain impressed by Duncan’s skills as a writer. His prose is clean, readable, and rich. There’s a great theatricality infused into his stories that make the mundane seem grand.
My main issues with the story had to do with the third act, where some lulls in pacing emerge and some steam is lost from the first parts of the book. Overall, though, this is another enjoyable adventure featuring a great protagonist and set of side characters. I look forward to seeing what comes next.
See this review and others at The Speculative Shelf.
megan_alice's review against another edition
4.0
3.5 stars - Despite being the first book in a series, The Queen of All Crows actually follows on from an earlier series. I didn't realise this until I started reading it and was being provided with a whole back story I didn't understand. It was still a fairly enjoyable read and I liked the plot of the female pirates making their own nation. However, I feel I would've connected to the characters more if I'd read the first series.
expendablemudge's review
5.0
It is not necessary to read the first trilogy featuring Elizabeth Barnabus to appreciate this novel. It would add incalculably to your pleasure in the read, but it isn't necessary.
The plot picks up where The Custodian of Marvels leaves off. Julia has vanished after embarking for America, there to join her hard-won happiness with husband Richard in his law firm's Patent-law practice there. Julia will make herself a new life by studying Patent law at Columbia University. All of that struggle and fight is now gone for naught with her airship's disappearance. Her bestie and earliest supporter Elizabeth is on the hunt for her at great personal cost. It seems, as of now, that Elizabeth's main supporter and illicit lover, John Farthing, has lost her via her betrayal of his trust as well as her disappearance.
For someone who picked this book up because of its terrific cover art, this should be enough: the friendship between the women is explicitly made the stakes of the story within two chapters. Possibly the most intriguing idea in the series is the existence of the International Patent Office. Those who have read The Fall of the Gas-Lit Empire may read the spoilers that follow.
Elizabeth's journey from Patent-Office battling terrorist to one of their own is a delightful part of that series's arc, and the basis for this series's stories. In these tales we will follow the intrepid, genderfluid Elizabeth as she resumes her part-time identity as her own brother in service of, not in fleeing from, her former enemy-turned-employer the Patent Office. That by itself would make this an astounding series to follow. But the stakes are far greater than merely serving those that Barnabus once despised. Mr. Barnabus is outed as Miss Barnabus memorably and completely for the duration of this book's search for Julia when we discover the truth of a tall tale of sea monsters eating ships.
The action of the story is set largely among the all-female pirate society, the Sargassans, operating in the North Atlantic Gyre. It's a world constructed around the Unicorn, which name made me snigger as I realized it was chosen to be the center of an all-female society. But I show my juvenile sense of humor. The novella-length time we're aboard the constructed world of the Sargassans is spent politicking and coping with human nature's ickier corners. Women, it turns out, do much as men do when left to rule themselves. I wonder if this is, in fact, true; I don't know how much of the world is based on women being women and how much on women reacting to the male-dominated world they hated enough to run away from. I suspect the truth is the latter by Author Duncan's design.
Now the design itself becomes an issue. This is the first book of a trilogy, whose second book has only recently appeared. The ending of this book's two-fold story is complete only on one strand, and that dangling second strand is going to itch and niggle the entire time we're embarked on a new quest in Elizabeth's emotionally battered and physically exhausted condition. The ending of The Queen of All Crows will not resolve the Barnabus case internal to the International Patent Office. It is clear that echoes of "O brave new world..." in the ending are not accidental. And with it, the opening of vast new vistas and fresh perspectives on the Gas-Lit Empire.
Because the action of this book, airship crashes and pirate republics and long sea voyages, all takes place in 2012.
The plot picks up where The Custodian of Marvels leaves off. Julia has vanished after embarking for America, there to join her hard-won happiness with husband Richard in his law firm's Patent-law practice there. Julia will make herself a new life by studying Patent law at Columbia University. All of that struggle and fight is now gone for naught with her airship's disappearance. Her bestie and earliest supporter Elizabeth is on the hunt for her at great personal cost. It seems, as of now, that Elizabeth's main supporter and illicit lover, John Farthing, has lost her via her betrayal of his trust as well as her disappearance.
For someone who picked this book up because of its terrific cover art, this should be enough: the friendship between the women is explicitly made the stakes of the story within two chapters. Possibly the most intriguing idea in the series is the existence of the International Patent Office. Those who have read The Fall of the Gas-Lit Empire may read the spoilers that follow.
The action of the story is set largely among the all-female pirate society, the Sargassans, operating in the North Atlantic Gyre. It's a world constructed around the Unicorn, which name made me snigger as I realized it was chosen to be the center of an all-female society. But I show my juvenile sense of humor. The novella-length time we're aboard the constructed world of the Sargassans is spent politicking and coping with human nature's ickier corners. Women, it turns out, do much as men do when left to rule themselves. I wonder if this is, in fact, true; I don't know how much of the world is based on women being women and how much on women reacting to the male-dominated world they hated enough to run away from. I suspect the truth is the latter by Author Duncan's design.
Now the design itself becomes an issue. This is the first book of a trilogy, whose second book has only recently appeared. The ending of this book's two-fold story is complete only on one strand, and that dangling second strand is going to itch and niggle the entire time we're embarked on a new quest in Elizabeth's emotionally battered and physically exhausted condition. The ending of The Queen of All Crows will not resolve the Barnabus case internal to the International Patent Office. It is clear that echoes of "O brave new world..." in the ending are not accidental. And with it, the opening of vast new vistas and fresh perspectives on the Gas-Lit Empire.
Because the action of this book, airship crashes and pirate republics and long sea voyages, all takes place in 2012.
pers's review
5.0
Disclaimer: I was given an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Wow! And wow again! And then wow some more!
I was already madly in love with Elizabeth (also known as Edwin) Barnabus, the gender fluid circus-born orphan and intelligence gatherer of Duncan's first trilogy: The Fall of the Gaslit Empire. But now I'm even more madly in love. Elizabeth's best friend, Julia Swain, is flying to America to join her new husband, and her airship is shot down somewhere over the Atlantic - which ought to be impossible because the International Patent Office, chief law-maker and controller of the Gaslit Empire, has outlawed the sort of weapons that would make it possible to shoot down an airship flying at that altitude.
Elizabeth can't accept the loss of her friend as a certain thing, so she persuades her lover, John Farthing of the Patent Office, to bring her the reports relating to the loss of Julia's airship, then she goes to the Patent Office itself to volunteer herself as an investigator - surprisingly, they allow her to go, and she boards an Atlantic whaling ship in the guise of her 'brother' Edwin (her male persona, adopted when a woman wouldn't be able to act) - she is eventually able to establish just what happened to Julia's airship, and a number of others, plus a lost ship - which leads her to the matriarchal nation known as 'Freedom Island' (which is, in fact, a conglomeration of ships that have been lashed together to create the Island).
Undergoing various 'tests' posed by the 'Queen of All Crows', Mother Rebecca, Elizabeth is eventually reunited with Julia, and there follow a series of escapades and excursions across the wide Sargasso Sea, before the pair, along with Elizabeth's young friend, Tinker, a former circus boy himself, eventually make landfall in America.
The pace of this novel is rapid and energetic, and Elizabeth's journeyings introduce us to a whole raft (pun TOTALLY intended! Heh!) of new characters, while keeping us in company with Julia and Tinker. The depiction of the Sargassans - the women of Freedom Island - isn't simplistic nor overwrought, indeed, it's sympathetic and depicts a wide variety of women who live and breathe on the page.
This was a fantastic opener for Duncan's new series, and I'm only slightly annoyed that I don't already have the next book on hand!
Wow! And wow again! And then wow some more!
I was already madly in love with Elizabeth (also known as Edwin) Barnabus, the gender fluid circus-born orphan and intelligence gatherer of Duncan's first trilogy: The Fall of the Gaslit Empire. But now I'm even more madly in love. Elizabeth's best friend, Julia Swain, is flying to America to join her new husband, and her airship is shot down somewhere over the Atlantic - which ought to be impossible because the International Patent Office, chief law-maker and controller of the Gaslit Empire, has outlawed the sort of weapons that would make it possible to shoot down an airship flying at that altitude.
Elizabeth can't accept the loss of her friend as a certain thing, so she persuades her lover, John Farthing of the Patent Office, to bring her the reports relating to the loss of Julia's airship, then she goes to the Patent Office itself to volunteer herself as an investigator - surprisingly, they allow her to go, and she boards an Atlantic whaling ship in the guise of her 'brother' Edwin (her male persona, adopted when a woman wouldn't be able to act) - she is eventually able to establish just what happened to Julia's airship, and a number of others, plus a lost ship - which leads her to the matriarchal nation known as 'Freedom Island' (which is, in fact, a conglomeration of ships that have been lashed together to create the Island).
Undergoing various 'tests' posed by the 'Queen of All Crows', Mother Rebecca, Elizabeth is eventually reunited with Julia, and there follow a series of escapades and excursions across the wide Sargasso Sea, before the pair, along with Elizabeth's young friend, Tinker, a former circus boy himself, eventually make landfall in America.
The pace of this novel is rapid and energetic, and Elizabeth's journeyings introduce us to a whole raft (pun TOTALLY intended! Heh!) of new characters, while keeping us in company with Julia and Tinker. The depiction of the Sargassans - the women of Freedom Island - isn't simplistic nor overwrought, indeed, it's sympathetic and depicts a wide variety of women who live and breathe on the page.
This was a fantastic opener for Duncan's new series, and I'm only slightly annoyed that I don't already have the next book on hand!