GIDEON SMITH & THE BRASS DRAGON
By David Barnett
Tor Books
352 pgs.
Last year we discovered a truly marvelous steampunk title, “Gideon
Smith and the Mechanical Girl,” by David Barnett. It was so audacious in its alternate-steam
world presentation mixing original characters with figures from various
literary classics. It was such a joy to
read, we nominated it for Best Pulp Novel of that year and, as with all fun
reads, we fervently hoped that Barnett would grace us with a sequel. That he has is a cause of much celebration
and proving himself a genuine fantasy adventure master, he delivers a follow-up
tale twice as grand as its predecessor.
It is months since the events chronicled in the first book a
young Gideon Smith, the native of a small fishing village, has been named the
Hero of the Empire by the Queen and has become an agent of the Foreign
Service. Accompanying him on his
adventures is the corpulent journalist, Aloysius Bent, and the lovely airship
captain, Ms Rowena Fanshawe. After
returning from an assignment in the South Pacific, they are ordered to British
America to retrieve Apep; the mechanical dragon stolen by the Texas outlaw Louis Cockayne along with
Maria, the clockwork girl. This is a
personal mission to Smith as he has fallen in love with Maria and is determined
to rescue her from Cockayne.
But this America
is primarily an untamed land with only its coastlines having been settled; the
British in the east, the Japanese in the west and the Spanish to the
south. Upon their arrival in New York,
they learn that Cockayne is hiding in the free Texas town of San Antonio now
called Steamtown and run by Thaddeus Pinch; a cyborg gunfirghter named more
machine than man. Pinch is a sadistic
fiend who operates the coal mines of Steamtown through the pain and suffering
of hundreds of kidnapped slaves.
To save Maria and retrieve the Brass Dragon, Gideon and his
friends have to battle a private army of cutthroat mercenaries and battle a
prehistoric monster. But as in their
first adventure, they manage to recruit new allies among which are a genius
Japanese inventor, an immortal freedom fighter known as Nameless and a beautiful
Zorro-like senorita whose prowess with a rapier is deadly. The action is non-stop, the locales both
familiar and strange and all of it populated by some of the most colorful
characters ever put down on paper.
“Gideon Smith and the Brass Dragon” is a rollicking adventure and for
David Barnett’s second winner in a row.
We can only wonder what he has up his imaginary sleeve for book number
three.
