I'm not sure why, since I was really excited about this one, but it took me a while to get into it. It read like I was starting in the middle of the book. But I stayed with it and it was worth it. Fun steampunk escape. This has 3 stories in it; I liked the last 2 best. ( )

I love Aldora!!!!! No need to say more. I love the diversity of settings and her sophisticated sensibilities in the midst of adventure. Would continue to read all I could get my hands on. ( )

Yes, Charles Babbage and airships do make appearances here. But the star of this series is Aldora and Coorlim’s skill in depicting her.

She’s not a warrior babe – though she does know hand-to-hand combat and fencing. She isn’t an inventor. In fact, she thinks the British Empire relies too much on the sophisticated technological infrastructure of this universe and exploits the lower classes. She’s had several lovers, but there’s no sex here.

What she is is a woman who has reluctantly compromised her desire for adventure and travel because of the social demands placed not just an an upper class woman but a Fiske, the family that upholds the standards all others fall short of. Part of that compromise is an engagement to Bartleby (of the crime-solving duo of Bartleby and James who have their own adventures in Coorlim’s Galvanic Century series) in a marriage of convenience.

These are straight-for-award adventure stories with an appealing character and not comedies of manners (though they might, in some sense, be tragedy of manners).

I reviewed the first story, “Sky Pirates Over London”, when it first appeared. That review copy impressed me enough that I bought this collection.

“The Tower of Babbage” has Aldora mounting a rescue expedition for an old friend after he disappeared while guiding a film crew in Central America. It’s not just a clockwork Mayan observatory we encounter but Aldora’s past and her reconsideration of it.

“Fine Young Turks” has little steampunkish technology and takes place in a pre-WWI Istanbul much like our own, and Aldora is very tempted to remain there after seeing the new freedoms granted women there and receiving a proposal from one of its prominent revolutionaries. It ends on a decidedly downbeat note, but I would certainly like more in the stories in the life of Aldora Fiske. ( )

I received this book from Library Thing to read and review. This is not the first book by this author that I have read and enjoyed. This story focuses on Aldora Fiske, the betrothed of Alton Bartleby, who figures in other of his stories. Aldora, though living in the steam punk Victorian England, is, by all accounts a very modern, 21st century woman. I admire the author for providing us with a woman who can enforce the idea of “be all that you can be” and do it so graciously. Her efforts to help out people who need it take her from London to the jungles of Mexico to the Ottoman Empire, all the while proving that there is far more to this woman than the social calls, shopping and tennis games expected of her in life in Victorian London. The stories are filled with adventure and excitement. My only problem is that I think the author should have written each story with more detail rather than writing three short stories, because I think each story would have benefitted more from more detail and more character development. Aldora is developed across the stories, but I would have liked more development of some of the other characters, such as her ward, the man who got her to England, or the group she went to the jungle with. I definitely enjoy reading this author. He definitely either knows the steam punk era or does a lot of research on the era for his books. His storylines, though so easy to relate to that you can almost imagine them taking place today, are very much related to the era in which they occur. ( )

This collection of stories shows a considerable advance in writing technique over the previous Bartleby and James stories. There is more characterization and the pace is not so swift as to make it difficult to keep up. The backgrounds, London, Mayan jungles, Constantinople, are well worked out.

The author continues his practice of including dialog in the speakers' native languages. The Spanish and Turkish checks out. translate.google.com cannot handle the Mayan but some of it can be found using google. Is the author really a hectoglot or does he have friends with deep linguistic knowledge?

I only noticed one typo: 'biblical food' on p. 54 is not about manna. It should say 'biblical flood.'

The stories center on Aldora Fiske, fiancée of Alton Bartleby. She is an interesting character and one hopes to meet her again. The end of the Young Turks story, where she sees herself mirrored, shows that she has room for personal growth.

One wonders who Penny's mother is. ( )