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The Affinity Bridge

a Newbury & Hobbes Investigation
Jun 05, 2014Eosos rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
Victorian London is in the throes of the industrial revolution, airships rule the skies and ground cars are replacing the horse and carriage. Sir Maurice Newbury is an agent for Queen Victoria and with his assistant, Miss Veronica Hobbes; he helps Scotland Yard investigate the string of murders being committed in the slums, while avoiding the victims of the zombie plague. When an airship crashes and the pilot is found to be missing, the Queen demands he drop the murder case and concentrate on explaining the disaster. I love the idea of the steampunk genre; the world is fascinating, the story exciting and the characters engaging. When it is done well and all these aspects come together, it can make a 5 star book but I find these few and far between. This one…just didn’t quite make it. I liked this story, the concept and characters were interesting but it felt incomplete, like the world was half built and the characters were cardboard cutouts instead of fully fleshed out human beings. The book was too short to fully detail all the interests of Sir Maurice and thus I was left with a piecemeal feel to his character. What I was most disappointed with was the world, other than the zeppelins and the clockwork men it really didn’t evoke a steampunk atmosphere for me. It was good enough that I will eventually read the sequels but I’m not in a big hurry.