 |
| The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man |
The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man is a terrific follow up to Mark Hodder’s first Sir Richard Burton and Algernon Swinburne’s adventure, The Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack. In this novel, time is even more askew. The Technologists and Eugenicists (genetic scientists) march ahead with their wild inventions and, to complicate things even more, it appears that in this world Madame Blavatsky wasn’t just making things up.
We meet up with Burton and Swinburne some months after they settled the Spring-Heeled Jack case. It appears that Isambard Kingdom Brunel is up to something when Burton catches him trying to steal a set of black diamonds. Charles Babbage makes a brief cameo and, as soon as this mini-mystery is wrapped up, Burton is off to investigate the Tichbourne Claimant. Based on what I know about mysteries, I know that the two cases have to connect at some point. It’s as much a rule as Chekov’s Gun. But I couldn’t have predicted the amazing story that Hodder dreamed up. The end of this book is truly extraordinary.
But let me back up a bit first. Burton and Swinburne do investigate the Tichbourne Claimant and rapidly come to the conclusion that he is not who he claims to be. But people strangely believe in this gargantuan horror for some reason. This part of the story takes center stage for most of the book. But it’s clear that there’s something else going on behind it. The Claimant, for one, doesn’t appear intelligent enough to be the leader of the conspiracy. Hodder drops a few, very subtle and very mysterious hints as to what the larger story is.
The last quarter of the book is a whirlwind. Not only does the in-book conspiracy get wrapped up in spectacular fashion, but Hodder lets you know that there is an even larger story. This larger story was sparked by the events of the first book, so you can’t just jump into the series or you will miss things. I’m intrigued to see how it will all play out in the other books that I fully expect Hodder to write.
To be a little less cryptic, I will say that Hodder is still playing with his theme of time travel. As Pratchett might explain, it’s a trousers of time thing. Because of a decision (or more than one), history splits. Instead of one path, history charges down another. Because of the divergence, history can’t be repaired. In The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man, Hodder complicates this even more by explaining why things that would be impossible in our leg of the trousers of time work in the other, things like astral projection, mind control, centipedes so large they get turned into omnibuses, and Folk’s Wagons made out of actual giant beetles.
The world that Hodder has created it delightfully complicated and stands up to the terrific mystery. It’s the kind of book, I think, that would make other writers jealous. The unevenness of tone and writing in the first book has cleared up in this installment. If Hodder is this good on his second book, I can only imagine how great the next ones are going to be.