James P. Blaylock

Narbondo / Langdon St. Ives — (1984-2011) Steampunk. Each novel can stand alone. The Adventures of Langdon St. Ives contains Homunculus and Lord Kelvin's Machine.
Publisher: Science Fiction. Southern California — sunny days, blue skies, neighbors on flying bicycles... ghostly submarines... mermen off the Catalina coast... and a vast underground sea stretching from the Pacific Ocean to the Inland Empire where Chinese junks ply an illicit trade and enormous creatures from ages past still survive. It is a place of wonder... and dark conspiracies. A place rife with adventure — if one knows where to look for it. Two such seekers are the teenagers Jim Hastings and his friend, Giles Peach. Giles was born with a wonderful set of gills along his neck and insatiable appetite for reading. Drawing inspiration from the novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Giles is determined to build a Digging Leviathan. Will he reach the center of the earth? or destroy it in the process?

The Ebb Tide

19th-century London. A quiet evening among more or less renowned gentleman, including the gifted scientist-explorer Langdon St. Ives, at their favorite tavern is interrupted by word that a map to a missing mysterious device has been found. In no time, as chronicled by St. Ives's cohort Jack Owlesby, the group sets off to claim the map and device, racing against the shadowy figure of St. Ives's nemesis, Ignacio Narbondo (now known as Dr. Frosticos).

The first new tale of St. Ives in nearly two decades, The Ebb Tide is a brisk steampunk yarn with a dash of Sherlock Holmes. (Steampunk is, of course, a play on cyberpunk; instead of computers, the focus is usually on airships or mechanical men.) The focus in The Ebb Tide is on underwater transports (and a strange underwater environment), which James Blaylock, as usual, describes with clear prose that manages to evoke the derring-do of the age. It's an engaging enough tale, and the illustrations by J.K. Potter are excellent. However, with a modest 110 pages of text (in my advance copy), there's just not much meat to it. There's virtually no character development, and I don't believe Dr. Frosticos even has any dialogue.

Sub Press is offering a deluxe hardcover edition for $35 (or $23 on Amazon as of October 2, 2009); however, many fans of steampunk would be better served by purchasing the Steampunk anthology (edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer) for about $10, as the latter includes the more satisfying St. Ives tale "Lord Kelvin's Machine" (one of the best tales in the anthology), as well as many other good stories. Thus, The Ebb Tide is recommended as a purchase for die-hard steampunk aficionados, or as a library loan for casual steampunk fans. 3 small brass portholes. —Rob Rhodes

The Affair of the Chalk Cliffs

Langdon St. Ives returns in The Affair of the Chalk Cliffs, James P. Blaylock’s latest Langdon St. Ives Adventure.

St. Ives is described as “the greatest, if largely unheralded, explorer and scientist in the Western World … piecing together a magnetic engine for a voyage to the moon.” Unfortunately, the premise of The Affair of the Chalk Cliffs is less ambitious than its protagonist. Although our heroes are explorers and scientists, they do little exploring here. In fact, they don’t even leave England. Worse, there is little mention of magnetic engines or steam engines, though an emerald’s power has a slight impact on the plot.

The adventure begins with an outbreak of madness at the Explorer’s Club, but don’t expect to see mad explorers. Instead, Tubby Frobisher, one of St. Ives’ colleagues, confesses that he sang “The Sorrows of Old Bailey,” which we should assume sounded dreadful but feels like a tease rather than an actual joke. Surely Blaylock could have done more with a collection of mad explorers in a steampunk universe. Ultimately, it’s enough to get St. Ives and his chronicler Jack Owlesby to put aside their kidney pie so that they can track down their dreaded nemesis, Dr. Ignacio Narbondo.

Hopefully this all sounds familiar because Blaylock relies on our awareness of archetypal characters to propel his plot. There is little time spent outlining why St. Ives and his assistant should leave their jam roly-poly, perhaps because the reader is expected to understand that this is simply what characters based on Sherlock Holmes should do. If St. Ives is a nod to Sherlock Holmes and Owlesby a nod to Watson, Dr. Ignacio Narbondo is our Moriarty. Owlesby describes him as “the sort of evil genius whose machinations are carried out by men easily manipulated by greed or fear. He was gnome-like in feature.” We can likewise take his motivations, his defeat and his eventual escape for granted.

Instead of plotting, characterization or setting, Blaylock has focused on tone and voice, giving The Affair of the Chalk Cliffs the feel of a pastiche. J. K. Potter’s illustrations do a good job of introducing a wry tone early, and his representations of Dr. Narbondo are actually quite funny. However, although a pastiche will imitate other works, it still needs to do something with its allusions and our expectations. Sadly, The Affair of the Chalk Cliffs rarely manages more than a few good jokes. —Ryan Skardal