£3.99 – £8.99
“Jeter’s sequel proves well worth the wait, and sets a new high bar for that ever-evolving style of speculative fiction whose Frankensteinian form he first galvanically jolted into life.”
– Locus
The first British publication of the sequel to Infernal Devices, to mark the 30th anniversary of Steampunk.
In the disorienting steam-fuelled Victorian London, the son of a great inventor finds himself drawn into plots and mysteries he can barely grasp.
File Under: Steampunk [ A Plague of Lighthouses | Sexual Healing | The lady’s Not For Turning | End of the World, Again ]
The second book in the George Dower trilogy
The world George Dower left when he went into hiding was significantly simpler than the new, steam-powered Victorian London. Dower is enticed into a web of intrigue with ominously mysterious players who have nefarious plans of which he can only guess. If he can locate and make his father’s Vox Universalis work as it was intended, his future is assured.
But his efforts are confounded by the strange Vicar Stonebrake. Drugged, arrested, and interrogated Dower is trapped in a maelstrom of secrets, corruption, and schemes that threaten to drown him in the chaos of this mad new world.
K W Jeter attended college at California State University, Fullerton where he became friends with James P Blaylock and Tim Powers, and through them, Philip K Dick. K W Jeter’s debut novel, Dr Adder, was praised by Dick as “A masterpiece… a truly wonderful novel”. Jeter was also the first to coin the term “steampunk,” in a letter to Locus magazine in April 1987. He currently lives in the US with his wife, Geri.
“Fiendish Schemes is a darkly humored portrayal of Victorian London written in the style of the period and is not for the faint of heart.”
– Historical Novel Society
“Jeter’s vision of a Victorian world transformed by steam power is fascinating and funny, populated by ambulatory lighthouses, grain-disdaining meatpunks, anarchist coalpunks, and depraved ‘fex’ addicts obsessed with ‘valve girls’. He thoroughly entertains readers with brilliant speculation and a charmingly reluctant hero.”
– Publishers Weekly, starred review
“A full-bodied rambunctious adventure of preposterous proportions that is full of knowing when it comes to people and weird contraptions.”
– Strange Alliances
“K W Jeter has created quite a marvelous world in Infernal Devices. Sometimes rather weird and alien but always consistent.”
– The Traveler’s Steampunk Blog“
“This is the real thing – a mad inventor, curious coins, murky London alleys and windblown Scottish Isles… A wild and extravagant plot that turns up new mysteries with each succeeding page.”
– James P Blaylock, author of Homunculus and Under London
“What we see in Infernal Devices is not just the presage of what steampunk is, but what it could have been, a marvelously self-aware and inventive attack on the obsessions and degradations of the present.”
– Strange Horizons
“Goddamn, what a book. This is like H G Wells with H P Lovecraft’s descriptions of darkness run through the mind of Sherlock Holmes writer Arthur Conan Doyle. It’s about as screwy as it gets, complete steampunkery, with a duo who are scamming their way across the land through an entirely different set of devices. Must read… Pure joy. I couldn’t set it down.”
– SFBook.com
“Suddenly I can see exactly what the whole fascination with Steampunk is all about. Jeter sets the Victorian scene here so skilfully, it’s absolutely perfect. I could easily have been reading a novel written in 1840. He’s impressively deft and accurate in his language of the time, making the novel completely believable, and yet he still writes in a style that is effortlessly readable. His Victorian London is dark, menacing, and compelling.”
– Fantasy Nibbles
“A delicious and quite insane romp through the gas-lit streets of London. Absolute must-read!”
– SFRevu
“I’ll save you the trouble of reading this entire review by simply saying that K W Jeter’s Infernal Devices is one of the best executed novels I’ve read in a long time, and I easily expect it to be one of my top reads for the year. I guarantee you will enjoy it.”
– The Little Red Reviewer
“A truly fantastical journey that requires a suspension of disbelief – but makes you all the happier for it.”
– My Shelf Confessions
“A skillfully handled, wonderfully inventive, and agreeably witty adventure.”
– Kirkus Reviews
“Infernal Devices is a ripsnorting, grandly comical Victorian-era potboiler that is far more entertaining than the most recent Indiana Jones movie; indeed it is more exciting than any big budget Hollywood blockbuster that I have seen in the past five years. It is that rare book that is both literary and cinematic. You can’t help but pine for a movie version even as you realize that it could never be as good as the book. It’s full of crazy, clockwork automatons, cliffhanger chapter endings, sinister conspiracies, and gloriously impossible super-science. It is a book which will transport you to another reality.”
– Tetsuo Broker
PRAISE FOR K W JETER:
“At times Jeter can be profound, deep observation swirling into the bizarre.”
– Bearcave
“Jeter is an exhilarating writer who always seems to have another rabbit to pull out of his hat.”
– The New York Times Book Review“
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