The Glass Books... is a piece of steampunk, a strand of Industrial Revolution sci-fi with a hardcore following in genre fiction and anime - as well as, it should be said, more than a whiff of Games Workshop about it. The classic texts are probably William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's The Difference Engine and, more recently, Alan Moore's immensely jolly League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comics, and this novel is nakedly indebted to both titles. Fans of Moore, particularly, will find themselves subconsciously ticking boxes as Dahlquist's narrative progresses: mysterious character who wears "smoked-glass spectacles" all the time - yes; sinister operations undertaken by chaps in diving-bell helmets and leather gauntlets - yes; airships - yes; lots of airships - yes. The plot goes something like this: a cabal of sinister aristos has discovered a substance that allows them to download human personalities and experiences into blue glass, a process that has the side-effect of making the subject entirely biddable to their demands. Ranged against them is a trio of accidental adventurers: a capable ingenue, a lovelorn mercenary and a strait-laced doctor, each of whom has his or her own reasons for wanting to topple the conspiracy.

Reading this book - and it is a page-turner - you become immersed, befogged, almost as if you had indeed been looking at one of the glass books. More than sex, what you're drugged by is fighting and pursuits: I've never seen violent physical action sustained over such a span in a novel. This intoxication is of a piece with the erotic thralldom the book projects, and it can become similarly cartoon-like: "The blow caught Starck squarely on the ear with a sickening, pumpkin-thwacking thud, dropping him like a stone."