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A review by mary_soon_lee
Pimp My Airship: A Naptown by Airship Novel by Maurice Broaddus
4.0
This steampunk novel drew me in quickly as it introduced Sleepy, a steam engineeer by day, poet and dreamer and chiba-smoker by night. The narrative alternates between Sleepy's perspective and that of Sophine, struggling to make her way as a scientist in a male-dominated world. I remained fond of Sleepy throughout, but didn't fully warm to Sophine.
Both Sleepy and Sophine are black (Sophine lighter-skinned than Sleepy) and the novel does an excellent job showing the bitterly racist society they live in, a vision of an America-that-might-have-been if Britain (Albion) still ruled most of it.
The title is great, albeit misleading. An airship appears only late and briefly.
Parts of the prose shone, yet I found many of the sentence fragments distracting. I don't object to sentence fragments in principle, but quite a few of these made me mentally hiccup as I worked to parse them.
I found the climax less compelling than the early parts of the story, though the epilogue pleased me. (Spoiler warning:)
Three and a half out of five sleepy stars, rounded up for Sleepy.
About my reviews: I try to review every book I read, including those that I don't end up enjoying. The reviews are not scholarly, but just indicate my reaction as a reader, reading being my addiction. I am miserly with 5-star reviews; 4 stars means I liked a book very much; 3 stars means I liked it; 2 stars means I didn't like it (though often the 2-star books are very popular with other readers and/or are by authors whose other work I've loved).
Both Sleepy and Sophine are black (Sophine lighter-skinned than Sleepy) and the novel does an excellent job showing the bitterly racist society they live in, a vision of an America-that-might-have-been if Britain (Albion) still ruled most of it.
The title is great, albeit misleading. An airship appears only late and briefly.
Parts of the prose shone, yet I found many of the sentence fragments distracting. I don't object to sentence fragments in principle, but quite a few of these made me mentally hiccup as I worked to parse them.
I found the climax less compelling than the early parts of the story, though the epilogue pleased me. (Spoiler warning:
Spoiler
it made me happy to see Sleepy performing poetry again.Three and a half out of five sleepy stars, rounded up for Sleepy.
About my reviews: I try to review every book I read, including those that I don't end up enjoying. The reviews are not scholarly, but just indicate my reaction as a reader, reading being my addiction. I am miserly with 5-star reviews; 4 stars means I liked a book very much; 3 stars means I liked it; 2 stars means I didn't like it (though often the 2-star books are very popular with other readers and/or are by authors whose other work I've loved).