Review: Poe Meets Steam Punk with a dash of H.G.Wells
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 01 29, 2013
This was a fun romp through a Poe-centric adventure. Erickson does a good job of idiomatically mimicking Poe' s own suspect, first-person narrative style, and it's fun seeing the grandfather of the macabre murder mystery himself embroiled in a fantastical tale of imagination. The steam punk aspect of the story, at first, takes a little getting used to, but even if you're not familiar with that modern genre, it reads more like Jules Verne or H.G. Wells than something anachronistic to a nineteenth-century tale. There are plenty inside jokes for those familiar with Poe' s life--his disdain for Longfellow, for example, or his love-hate relationship with literary criticism--that make for nice Easter eggs for the reader. Accept that this is historical fiction--as the author clearly acknowledges in his afterword--and if you like Poe, you should have a good time.