Read This: Steampunk Westerns

I have a new review in Shelf Awareness this morning, talking about two recently published Wild West steampunk novels—of the two, I have a preference for Joe R. Lansdale’s Flaming Zeppelins, which I love because it’s just plumb crazy. You’ve got Buffalo Bill Cody’s disembodied head being kept alive in a jar, guiding his Wild West Show to Japan on airships so they can rescue Frankenstein’s monster from the Shogun, after which they run into parodies of two classic Jules Verne and H.G. Wells characters? And that’s just the first of two novellas? Sign me up for some of that.

Mike Resnick’s The Buntline Special is entertaining, but it comes off as tame in comparison to Lansdale’s stories—in part, I suggest in the review, because Resnick is basically sticking to the established narrative of the Gunfight at the OK Corral, just adding some steampunk and fantasy glosses to the events. The characters hold up, but they’re being put through their paces—Lansdale allows for a lot more unpredictability, and it makes for more wildly enjoyable storytelling.

In a footnote, I mention that either book might make good follow-up reading for folks who liked Cherie Priest’s Boneshaker, set in an 1870s Seattle that’s been cordoned off after a zombie outbreak… in fact, reading these two books reminded me that I ought to make some time for Priest’s sequel, Dreadnought. Priest’s tales may not be as flamboyantly weird as Lansdale’s, but Boneshaker is surprising and strange enough to keep you from becoming complacent, so I’m eager to see how another story set in the same universe plays out.

21 December 2010 | read this |