Stephen Hunt

Jackelian — (2007-2010) — The Jackelian novels are set in the same Victorian-style world.

The Court of the Air — (2007) Publisher: When streetwise Molly Templar witnesses a brutal murder at the brothel she has recently been apprenticed to, her first instinct is to run back to the poorhouse where she grew up. But there she finds her fellow orphans butchered, and it slowly dawns on her that she was the real target of the attack. For Molly is a special little girl, and she carries a secret that marks her out for destruction by enemies of the state. Oliver Brooks has led a sheltered existence in the backwater home of his merchant uncle. But when he is framed for his only relative's murder he is forced to flee for his life, accompanied by an agent of the mysterious Court of the Air. Chased across the country, Oliver finds himself in the company of thieves, outlaws and spies, and gradually learns more about the secret that has blighted his life. Soon Molly and Oliver will find themselves battling a grave threat to civilization, an ancient powerthought to have been quelled millennia ago. Their enemies are ruthless and myriad, but the two orphans are also aided by indomitable friends in this endlessly inventive tale full of drama, intrigue,and adventure. The Court of the Air is a rollicking adventure set in a fantastical Dickensian clockwork universe that will appeal to fans of Susanna Clarke and Philip Pullman.

The Court of the Air

Stephen Hunt's The Court of the Air is a fantasy novel in the steampunk subgenre. The story is set in a gritty world where steam- and clockwork-powered devices are the height of technology and where an aerial navy of military balloons keeps the nation of Jackals safe from the dirty communist Quatréshiftians. Actually, the “Shifties” are not quite communist, per se; they seem based on the French revolutionaries, complete with a penchant for decapitating the ruling classes.

We follow the separate yet concurrent adventures of two orphans, Oliver and Molly, as they dodge agents of the Big Brother-like Court of the Air and a dark underworld cult bent on the world domination. It's a sort of Oliver Twist meets the X-men in Gotham City, if you can imagine such a thing.

There is a lot to like about The Court of the Air. The writing is tight and descriptive. The characters are varied and unique, for the most part. The world is original and quite detailed. There are plots and sub-plots, twists and intrigues.

The only thing I really didn't like about The Court of the Air ― or the second book, The Kingdom Beyond the Waves, for that matter ― was that there seemed to be an underlying thread of anger throughout it. The characters are an angry lot and many of their actions are brutal. But it's not just the brutality that bugs me; it's the self-righteousness of the characters when killing off their enemies. There is an astounding lack of mercy shown by the supposed good guys. It really is quite jingoistic, and the writing gets more overwrought as you get towards the end of the book.  Here's a snippet:

'We have something they don't... We fight as free citizens of Jackals, not as slaves of a king or a first committee or caliph.' He pulled one of his belt pistols out and the lion of Jackals on the handle seemed to suck in the light of the afternoon, drawing down rays of sunlight that rotated, blinding the troops with a brilliance they had never known before. 'We will not suffer the heel of tyranny, we will not bend to unworthy gods, we will not see an evil without striking it down, and we will not pass meekly into the long face of darkness that is endangering our land. Because we are Jackelians ― and our soul of freedom can never, never be conquered.

And so on. It wouldn't be so bad, but the characters are totally hypocritical. They supposedly stand for all these things, yet the previous 500 pages of the book show just how little they truly live by them. All in all, The Court of the Air deteriorated as it progressed. Part of this is down to personal tastes — I just couldn't relate to the author's fetish for self-righteous bloodbaths. The writing itself was still effective, however, — it's more the direction it takes that bothered me. Oh, also the great unveiling of the sneaky bits at the end was a let down. Basically one character spells out some of the plot twists in a paragraph of monologue and you get to think, “Huh. Where did that all come from?” and then it ends.

It's hard for me to rate The Court of the Air. It is a well-written novel filled with great ideas and originality, but ruined by some of the underlying themes and ideals. I quite enjoyed reading most of it, though I wouldn't read it a second time. —Mark Pawlyszyn

The Kingdom Beyond the Waves — (2008) Publisher: Professor Amelia Harsh is obsessed with finding the lost civilisation of Camlantis, a legendary city from pre-history that is said to have conquered hunger, war and disease — tempering the race of man's baser instincts by the creation of the perfect pacifist society. It is an obsession that is to cost her dearly. She returns home to Jackals from her latest archaeological misadventure to discover that the university council has finally stripped her of her position in retaliation for her heretical research. Without official funding, Amelia has no choice but to accept the offer of patronage from the man she blames for her father's bankruptcy and suicide, the fiercely intelligent and incredibly wealthy Abraham Quest. He has an ancient crystal-book that suggests the Camlantean ruins are buried under one of the sea-like lakes that dot the murderous jungles of Liongeli. Amelia undertakes an expedition deep into the dark heart of the jungle, blackmailing her old friend Commodore Black into ferrying her along the huge river of the Shedarkshe on his ancient u-boat. With an untrustworthy crew of freed convicts, Quest's force of female mercenaries on board and a lunatic steamman safari hunter acting as their guide, Amelia's luck can hardly get any worse. But she's as yet unaware that her quest for the perfect society is about to bring her own world to the brink of destruction!

The Kingdom Beyond the Waves

Imagine a post-apocalyptic Dickensian world where the main character is a female Indiana Jones...  I'll come back when you're ready.

This is the setting we find ourselves in when reading The Kingdom Beyond the Waves. Amelia Harsh is our protagonist; a swinging (as in ropes and vines) heroine who has been ostracized from all colleges but one, where she has been taken under the wing of an elderly professor who puts up with her larger-than-life adventures in the field and her frowned-upon theories of their ancient predecessors.

Orphan Amelia, together with a cantankerous elderly submariner, a steam-powered robot capable of rational thought, a mysterious blind man, a woman who is part crayfish, a bevy of oft-naked Amazonian bodyguards, and a gang of tough smugglers, journey up-river into a dangerous jungle to find a lost city and possibly the key to restoring society to a utopian peace.

It's like author Stephen Hunt thought, “I wonder what we'd get if Verne, Spielberg, Asimov, and Dickens all got together to write a novel?” Would it be The Kingdom Beyond the Waves? The basic ingredients are all there, though more likely it would devolve into arguing as Jules and Steven gang up on Isaac about the number of explosions and volcanoes, while Charles sneaks in more florid detail.

So, is it any good or is it just a painful mish-mash of jagged ideas? Well, like most novels, there are good and bad aspects. The writing, on the whole, is quite good; scenes are well-described with no extraneous detail and the plot moves along at a steady clip. The characters are believable, which is a credit to the author considering how far-fetched many of them really are.

Once again, like the first book, The Court Of The Air, the main character is an orphan. It seems that Stephen Hunt has a thing about orphans — so far all three of his main characters have been orphans. One thing about the characters that weakened them for me is that they are all quite insular; none of them really make firm friendships throughout either of his two novels. So, we have characters who grow up without family or reliable friends and then go on to remain apart — Amelia has been ostracized by her learned fellows, Oliver was marked as an outcast and potential danger to society, and Molly was a washer-woman who gets sold into a brothel. Quite naturally, there is also an underlying anger and distrust that threads its way through these books.

Like the previous book, The Court Of The Air, all of that underlying mad-at-the-world anger boils out towards the end and the author spends the last few chapters thoroughly stomping his sandcastle. I'm not talking about needing a happy ending here; what I'm not keen on is the glorified fetish for bloody vengeance. The endings truly leave me feeling icky.

Something else I didn't like was that Hunt needlessly developed minor characters who'd just vanish into the ether and never return. Yet there were major characters in the book that really, really could have had more time and exploration. For example, one key character upon whom the entire plot hinges was all dark and mysterious throughout the book, but then the book ends and his past is not properly resolved and we are left with mysteries.

So the review for this novel is very much like that of the first one, for the same reasons. The writing is good, with a few small peeves, and the world is very imaginative. But it's a story told by someone who seems to have some deep-seated trust issues and I can't help but feel put off by these vibes as I reach the end of the book. —Mark Pawlyszyn

The Rise of the Iron Moon — (2009) Publisher: From the author of The Court of the Air and The Kingdom Beyond the Waves comes a thrilling new adventure set in the same Victorian-style world. Perfect for fans of Philip Pullman and Susanna Clarke. Born into captivity as a product of the Royal Breeding House, friendless orphan Purity Drake suddenly finds herself on the run with a foreign vagrant from the North after accidentally killing one of her guards. Her strange rescuer claims he is on the run himself from terrible forces who mean to enslave the Kingdom of Jackals as they conquered his own nation. Purity doubts his story, until reports begin to filter through from Jackals' neighbours of the terrible Army of Shadows, marching across the continent and sweepign all before them. But there's more to Purity than meets the eye. As Jackals girds itself for war against an army of near-unkillable beasts serving an ancient evil with a terrible secret, it soon becomes clear that their only hope is a strange little royalist girl and the last, desperate plan of an escaped slave.

Secrets of the Fire Sea — (2010) Publisher: A tale of high adventure and derring-do set in the same Victorian-style world as the acclaimed The Court of the Air and The Rise of the Iron Moon. The isolated island of Jago is the only place Hannah Conquest has ever known as home. Encircled by the magma ocean of the Fire Sea, it was once the last bastion of freedom when the world struggled under the tyranny of the Chimecan Empire during the age-long winter of the cold-time. But now this once-shining jewel of civilization faces an uncertain future as its inhabitants emigrate to greener climes, leaving the basalt plains and raging steam storms far behind them. For Hannah and her few friends, the streets of the island's last occupied underground city form a vast, near-deserted playground. But Hannah's carefree existence comes to an abrupt halt when her guardian, Archbishop Alice Gray, is brutally murdered in her own cathedral. Someone desperately wants to suppress a secret kept by the archbishop, and if the attempts on Hannah's own life are any indication, the killer believes that Alice passed the knowledge of it onto her ward before her saintly head was separated from her neck. But it soon becomes clear that there is more at stake than the life of one orphan. A deadly power struggle is brewing on Jago, involving rival factions in the senate and the island's most powerful trading partner. And it's beginning to look as if the deaths of Hannah's archaeologist parents shortly after her birth were very far from accidental. Soon the race is on for Hannah and her friends to unravel a chain of hidden riddles and follow them back to their source to save not just her own life, but her island home itself.

Jack Cloudie — (2011) Publisher: A tale of high adventure and derring-do set in the same Victorian-style world as the acclaimed The Court of the Air and The Secrets of the Fire Sea. Thanks to his father's gambling debts, young Jack Keats finds himself on the streets and trying to survive as a pickpocket, desperate to graft enough coins to keep him and his two younger brothers fed. Following a daring bank robbery gone badly awry, Jack narrowly escapes the scaffold, only to be pressed into Royal Aerostatical Navy. Assigned to the most useless airship in the fleet, serving under a captain who is most probably mad, Jack seems to be bound for almost certain death in the far-away deserts of Cassarabia. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Omar ibn Barir, the slave of a rich merchant lord finds his life turned upside down when his master's religious sect is banned. Unexpectedly freed, he survives the destruction of his home to enter into the service of the Caliph's military forces — just as war is brewing. Two very similar young men prepare to face each other across a senseless field of war. But is Omar the enemy, or is Jack's true nemesis the sickness at the heart of the Caliph's court? A cult that hides the deadly secret to the origins of the gas being used to float Cassarabia's new aerial navy. If Jack and his shipmates can discover what Cassarabia's aggressive new regime is trying to conceal, he might survive the most horrific of wars and clear his family's name. If not!