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A review by pers
The Queen of All Crows by Rod Duncan
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!