The Rise of the Automated Aristocrats

May 18, 2015
The sixth and final book in Hodder’s Burton and Swinburne steampunk series (after The Return of the Discontinued Man) fills out the stories built up in the previous titles and provides a fitting and fiery conclusion. Sir Richard Burton and poet Algernon Swinburne are snatched at the moment of their deaths and brought to 1861 London, where the time-traveling ship Orpheus (which carried them into
the future in their last adventure) is just returning. The confusion leads to uncharacteristic stumbles from Burton, resulting in the transfer of human consciousness into mechanized men. Comic absurdity blends with bone-cracking brutality as clockwork servants turn on their creators, their ruthlessness accompanied by excruciating politeness. A twisted variation of Benjamin Disraeli’s Young England reduces Victorian-era London to the dystopian wretchedness that Burton and Swinburne previously averted. This luridly realized vision of brutality, and Burton’s corresponding descent into despondency, add a layer of gloom. But Swinburne’s yelping, twitching buoyancy is a surprisingly
effective tonic and a reminder of why the pairing of these two mismatched figures has been such a success. Agent: Eddie Schneider, JABberwocky.

June 1, 2015
Final entry in Hodder's steampunk/time travel series (The Return of the Discontinued Man, 2014, etc.) featuring Victorian explorer/translator Sir Richard Francis Burton and his improbable sidekick, the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne. Series loyalists will recall the assassination of Queen Victoria by Edward Oxford, an insane time traveler from the 23rd century. This time, Burton finds himself, young and healthy, in 1864 but burdened by sharp memories of himself as a dying old man; Swinburne reports similar recollections. Before they have time to dwell on these matters, they climb aboard the rotorship Orpheus and proceed to the 23rd century, where the Beetle, a strange creature who exists simultaneously in multiple realities and, in some unfathomable way, is also Burton, explains that they must be transported into yet another alternate past where the Beetle's complicated plot will knit up the strands of time broken by the mad Oxford. Pause for breath. Back in 1861, however, things immediately go wrong. Orpheus' artificial intelligence inexplicably falls silent; following a crucial meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and genius Charles Babbage, Babbage vanishes, but the intelligent robots he invented proliferate. Worse, Disraeli intends to transfer the mentalities of the empire's ruling elite into immortal mechanical bodies and thereby ensure their supremacy forever. Soon, London's parks become concentration camps for dissidents, the state's political enemies languish in slave labor camps in India, and Burton and Swinburne battle hordes of mechanical police. Though Hodder ties his time-travel rationale in knots, the plot makes no sense anyhow. Yet when, all too often, the occasionally brutal, sadistic action just plods, his dazzling inventiveness keeps things bubbling along. More of a mixed bag than hitherto, but regulars will find it hard to resist.

COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

July 1, 2015

Hodder completes his steampunk series (The Return of the Discontinued Man) in an action-packed finale that delves deep into the backstory and personal history of heroes Burton and Swinburne as they explore alternate pasts and futures. As always it is up to the enterprising duo to save the Empire, but can they do it while also saving their past and future selves? The entire series will be welcomed by readers who also enjoy the adventures of Books and Braun in Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris's "Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences" series.--JM

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from June 1, 2015
Appropriately, since this is the final volume in the Victorian-era steampunk series starring explorer/adventurer Richard Francis Burton and poet Algernon Swinburne, the book begins with Burton's death. But, this being a series involving time travel (among many other things that didn't exist in the real Victorian era), Burton doesn't really die; instead, he flashes back in time, where he rejoins his old friend Swinburne, who has also flashed back from his own death, nearly two decades after Burton's demise, for one final, mind-bending adventure, one last chance to preserve the London they know and love from becoming a nightmare city where the ordinary citizens are oppressed by the elite with the aid of technology brought back from the future by Burton and Swinburne themselves. As usual, Hodder mixes real people and real history into his wide-eyed fantasy, blurring the line between fiction and reality so thoroughly that the whole thing feels like it could actually have happened (steam-powered automatons seem just as real here as the real-life figures of Burton and Swinburne). It's a bit depressing to think there won't be any further Burton and Swinburne adventures, but it's exciting to wonder what the author might do next. An outstanding finish to a great series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)