The Affinity Bridge
This was recommended to me by a friend, Alex, who has a fondness for Steampunk. Since I too have a bit of a fascination with this genre, I was happy to get a lead on a good book. I wasn’t disappointed.
The Affinity Bridge begins with a scene in India, revealing a horrific illness, then moves into London. There are three plot elements: an illness that turns its victims into “revenants”, a ghost killing paupers in the streets of London, and a mysterious automaton-piloted airship crash. These threads are woven together to form a complex story line that is exciting to follow.
As we get into the investigation, we discover that the airship crash is highly suspect. The automaton pilot is missing and the doomed passengers were found roped into their seats. This case first came to the Crown’s attention because a missing noble was among the dead.
The ghost, a “blue police man”, comes from local legend. In his first incarnation, the blue policeman was a “ghost” taking revenge for a police officer’s murder. He hunted down and killed every member of the gang that attacked him. Now the ghost appears to be indiscriminate; the victims appear to be unrelated to each other except that they were all poor wretches from Whitechapel.
Investigating the murders of the blue police man becomes increasingly dangerous as the victims are found in the slums where the revenant disease is most prevalent. These revenants are little more than animals, driven by insatiable hunger while their bodies rot. Neither pain nor injury is a deterrent for them.
The story unfolds like a mystery novel, with the steampunk elements added casually. There are steam-powered cabs that can be hailed alongside horse-drawn carriages. People can travel by air-ship as well as over land. The queen’s personal physician is a mad scientist of sorts, using technology to prolong her life as well as healing her agents. Automatons have been built to act as servants and pilots. They are of course extremely expensive, making them a status symbol as well as a scientific wonder.
All three main plots, the airship crash, the blue policeman murders, and the devastating revenant virus, draw together beautifully for a great conclusion. I really enjoyed reading The Affinity Bridge, and look forward to the other books in the series.
Steampunk novels can be hard to balance. The Affinity Bridge did a great job making the very nature of the world a steampunk world. It captured the excitement of the time without beating the reader over the head with invention. Other steampunk novels have stories cluttered with affectation, be it flowery language, or scientific gadgets, but they aren’t really part of the world. Each gadget sits on top of the plot, weighing it down and getting in the way of details. One such series is the Parasol Protectorate series. Their use of Victorian phrasing borders on silly, but I am drawn to them anyway. I enjoy them the way some people enjoy soap operas. Another example is The Map of Time, which was nearly painful to read. In fact, I can’t talk about how horrible it was without talking about the ending of each short section.
Spoiler Alert for The Map of Time!
Spoiler Alert! Spoiler Alert!
The Map of Time
The Map of Time contains three separate sections which are only loosely related. All three feature famous author H.G. Wells as an important character. The first section was actually enjoyable, as it focused on a young man unable to get over his guilt and move on with his life after his One True Love dies. The woman of his affection was actually the married prostitute Marie Kelly. The young man finally managed to declare his love for Marie Kelly to his father, only to be turned out and cut off from his wealthy family. He had hoped to be given an allowance so he could keep Marie Kelly as his mistress in a tasteful love nest, keeping her safe from the dangers of Whitechapel. (What he would have done with her husband was not explained.)
When he returns to his One True Love, to tell her that he was not penniless but that it didn’t matter, so long as they were together, he finds her dead at the hands of Jack the Ripper. Since that terrible night, his Romantic soul would not let him have any real happiness, or allow him to move forward. His Love was dead. It was only a matter of time before he joined her. He even went so far as to plot his suicide, but his plans were interrupted by his best friend. However, his friend offers him a chance at redemption: he could travel back in time to save Marie Kelly.
This ultimately leads to H.G. Wells and his “time machine.” While there is no real time machine, an elaborate plan is hatched to “save Marie Kelly in a parallel universe.” I liked the premise of this story, using trickery to save this young man’s life.
The second story also uses trickery and faked time travel, but for far baser purposes. An actor involved with Murry’s Time Travel accidentally meets a female observer and falls in lust. He tricks her into bed, but from remorse he must involve H.G. Wells to write love letters. The romance blossoms into something far better and nobler than it began, but it is still an uncomfortable premise.
The final story is somewhat convoluted. This is the first tale in The Map of Time that involves actual time travel. I liked the idea used for this time travel, involving not technology but genetics. They also introduce the idea of the map of time and a library containing the “original” history of their world. This could have been worth exploring further, but in this short story, Wells’ life is threatened and he has to make a choice: allow events to progress as they are about to, leading to the birth of time travel, or try to change his future and live life as he was “meant to”. After we hear all about Wells’ future life, his trials, his progeny, and the future of the human race, Wells’ chooses the other path.
This effectively destroys all genetically triggered time travel and erases that parallel universe.
So nothing actually happened in the entire last story. It’s the time travel equivalent to “and then he woke up.”
That would be bad enough but Wells muses about the nature of parallel universes, wondering if perhaps every fictional book could be a plausible world. Could he be a character in someone else’s book?
Cliché after cliché. And throughout the three stories the reader must put up with an obnoxious narrator. This narrator follows the “why use two words when twenty or more will do” school of thought. Instead of facilitating the stories and adding to my enjoyment of them, it distracts from the pieces.
Overall, if someone is interested in this book, I would recommend reading the first story, possibly the second if you like questionable romances, and completely skipping the third.
Good review! Thank you!
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