Review: Airships, and Adventure
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 10 10, 2013
The Wake of the Dragon: A Steampunk Adventure by Jaq D. Hawkins is a Steampunk story. Recently I have ventured into the world of Steampunk with, of all things, a YouTube series called Dirigible Days.The Wake of the Dragon follows the rules of the genre quite well, airships and gadgets set in a Victorian setting. It starts out with a pirate like adventure, but on airships. Captain Bonny, and I love the picture that name presents, takes off with a warehouse full of opium. At times I am reminded of Greek mythology in the way the story is told. We have our pirate and we have Dudley, chasing him down.There is a hint of a love interest, and lots of adventure, and of course the execution of the "Victorian Age" and Steampunk elements are very good.The British spellings and punctuation were a little hard to get used to, but once I did, they read smoothly. The drawback for me was the pacing of the novel. I found myself wanting the characters to move forward, while they were often stuck in their heads while we were told the story rather than experiencing the story as they lived it. A lot of this internal monolog could have been cut and the pace of the book increased quite a bit.I also wondered why the author only had one female character of note, Ann, and she turned out to be shallow and not very well developed, as in the things she did seemed without reason.The book was a good read, and an interesting tale. This reader wishes there had been a bit more action in the adventure.A solid 3 stars for a good entertaining read.