Doktor Glass by Thomas Brennan

 “Not enough time had passed since he had sat on the side of that very bed, there, and held Sarah’s hand while the drugs had struggled to do their work. He didn’t know if he could trust himself. He felt like one of the Span’s great cables wound too tight. Even braided steel snapped under enough strain.”

To differentiate it from alternate-history fantasy or “gas-lamp” tales, steampunk almost has to have some outstanding piece of technology. It might be airborne penny-farthings, brass seam-driven motorcycles or clunky calculating machines that magically provide access to vast amounts of information. In Thomas Brennan’s novel Doktor Glass, the extraordinary thing that looms over the entire novel is the Transatlantic Span, a vast bridge that runs from Liverpool to New York Harbor — a span that is about to be inaugurated in a great public ceremony just days after the story begi... Read More