Must Be Seen to Be Believed

Thomas Marent's Rainforest is one of the most beautiful books I have ever seen. No words can describe it adequately. Seriously: 360 pages of intense, amazing portraits of species found in rainforests throughout the world. The book has sections devoted to panoramas, diversity, survival (subsections: predator, arms and armor, and deception), cycles (subsections: flower to fruit, lifelines, and recyclers), and society.

Some of these pictures will make you gasp. You can't help it. (It happened just now: I opened the book at random to a photo of caterpillars, page 310 - OMG!!)

It's a large, coffee table-sized book. In addition to the gorgeous photographs he gathered over 16 years, Marent includes descriptions that can make you want to explore these organisms (plants, animals, fungi...) more. For example, "Australia's peppermint-stick insect (Megacrania batesii) is so called because it exudes a peppermint-scented liquid." Whoa! I love this kind of stuff!

He also writes about being there, doing the photography - "My guide gave me strict orders to stay at least 8 yards... from the animals, but I made the mistake of getting too close. One of the chimps, alarmed by my presence, started screaming, shaking branches, and thumping the ground. Then the whole group followed. I was petrified. Chimps are fantastically strong, and they can be brutally violent. My guide whispered that I should keep totally still and avoid eye contact. I stared at the ground and waited, my heart pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat. After a minute, the chimps began to quiet down, and I started edging away."

One of the online bookstores claims that the book includes a CD with sounds of the rainforest. Our library copy did not, so you may want to confirm that, if you're interested in buying Rainforest. And if the CD exists, please let me know!

The book alone is enough to inspire us to preserve as much as we can of earth's rainforests. It really is stunning. Check it out!

[Post pic of a panther chameleon - see more interior photos at the DK site.]

A magazine on the Make

No lengthy preamble to this one, no long and involved story of my days as a bookseller cleaning up the magazine section after it had been torn apart by high school kids every day during lunch period (well, I guess that's the whole story there), just a simple recommendation for a magazine so cool it makes me honestly wish I were a teen again.

Make: technology on your time is a quarterly offering chock full of all sorts of things one can... make. There's a lot of re-purposed technology here, a lot of recycling, a bit of hacking, a bit of robots and a touch of whimsy, all of it sort of like a 21st century Popular Mechanics but with cooler graphics and more satisfying results.

The current issue centers around the theme Spy Tech and features projects on how to make a chess set with a secret drawer that uses strategically placed (and magnetic) playing pieces to open; how to turn a handful of cheap parts into a listening device placed in a hollowed out book; and how to turn a cell phone camera into a long-range digital spy scope. This beats the heck out of those craft projects in magazines from back in the day that had us carving out boats that were powered by a copper tube heated by a candle!

This is why the magazine makes me wish I was a teen again: because instead of lounging around whining about having nothing to do, I'd like to believe I would have spent all my free time (and a sizable chunk of my homework time) and all my expendable income making stuff. In the process I would have learned about electronics, tools, computers, laws of physics, pranks I would never have dreamed of, and who knows what other doors would have been opened to me.

Water rockets! Electric cars! A million and one uses for Altoids tins, including the Minty Boost battery charger that gives your iPod 10 extra hours of play and will get you flagged as a possible terrorist threat at airport security! It's about all the things I loved doing as a boy (like I don't enjoy these things now?): tearing stuff apart, figuring out how it works, building something new out of the parts your cannot put back together. In fact, one of the Make mantras is "If you can't open it, you don't own it" which is in reference to this idea that you void your warranty on your electronics if you "tamper" with something you paid for. Wanna take a dead cell phone and turn the battery and it's vibrating motor into a robot? Wanna learn how to carve the coolest pumpkins come Halloween? How about a bird feeder with a remote control for taking pictures of the birds that come for a visit? Yup, all inside this little magazine here.

That said, there is something of a spoiler to all this: there's a lot of content available online at their website. Not all of it, but a lot, and it spawned interest in another website called Instructables where people post their own home-brewed projects online, free for the taking.

But in the end, is it reading? Of course it's reading! Magazines are one of the areas never covered in all those surveys of teen reading habits. Or if there is a magazine question, it's usually about Sports Illustrated, Time, People, and the like. I feel like magazines have been given short shrift and, despite wringing of hands and wolf cries over the end of publishing as we know it, I don't think magazines are going to be leaving us anytime soon. Certainly Make seems to be doing well.

I don't remember how I originally discovered Make, but I got tired of never finding copies at the library (because they're always checked out) and begged for a subscription for my birthday. I suspect that if you are or know a teen boy who hasn't encountered Make that they're sure to find at least one project in every issue that makes them want to hustle up the gear and get down to the nitty gritty of following the directions.

Make: technology on your time
published quarterly by O'Reilly
http://makezine.com/

More than Friends: Poems from Him and Her

More Than Friends: Poems from Him and Her by Sara Holbrook and Allan Wolf is a dialogue between a guy and a girl about their relationship. At the start of the book, the two are friends - she complains to him about other guys who are jerks, he starts to wonder if she's worth it. Then one day, things change:

Veggie Panini is the Answer to Everything

I don't know what makes
two people "just friends" on Thursday
and "more than friends" on Friday.
But today was Friday.
The one-hundredth look
was different from the first ninety-nine.
Today's "Hi" was different
from every "Hi" that came before.

I swear I wasn't smitten,
but then . . . the lunch bell rang.
And there you are:
  sitting at our usual lunchroom table
  (has she always sat like that?)
  and we look at each other
  (has she always looked like that?)
  and we say "Hi"-
  (has she always talked like that?)
  eating what looks like
  (has she always chewed like that?)
  just a sandwich but what you inform me
  is actually a "veggie panini."

"A veggie what?" I ask and smile
as wide as a door on well-oiled hinges.
And you smile back the same and answer,
"Paah-NEE-nee. Paah-NEE-nee. A veggie panini."
  In English class I even look it up.

"Paah-NEE-nee. Paah-NEE-nee. A veggie panini."
I whisper it into the electric air and picture
your lips, your smile, your look, your lunch, your hair.
I mutter it all the way home:
"Veggie panini. Veggie panini."
I hug my mom (first time in like a year).
"And how was your day?" my mother asks.
"Veggie paah-NEE-nee" is my answer.

Veggie panini is the answer to everything.

They offer opinions on things like Shopping, Underwear, Sex and Music in short poems, and each of them explores their feelings as well.

The book follows the relationship through the giddy feelings of first love, and then issues crop up, like spending so much time together that you don't get time with other friends, not knowing what the other person wants, starting to feel like the other person doesn't like you just the way you are.

I Thought That Things Were Really Going Great

You knew, from jump, that I'm no fashion plate.
Now suddenly you're calling me a slob?
I thought that things were really going great.
You act like I'm applying for a job.
You want a full report when I'm not home.
The slightest misstep triggers your alarm.
While I admit my eyes do sometimes roam,
I look but I don't touch, so what's the harm?
If I appear defensive it's because
my me has been devoured by our we.
I thought that you were into who I was,
not into who I wanted you to be.
I thought we were a grand-slam hit home run,
but now I think we're going, going . . . done.

The two poems I've shared thus far are from the guy's point of view because hey - this is Guys Lit Wire after all. And a lot of guys who've been in relationships probably recognize something familiar in these poems. It may not be an exact fit, of course. But there's something to be said for reading about someone else's experience. Maybe it offers a map of what to do (or what not to do), or maybe it just offers a window into how to wrap your head around a relationship a bit.

And what makes this collection of poems so great is that for every poem written by the guy (Allan Wolf, channeling his inner teen), there's one written by the girl (Sara Holbrook channeling hers). Here's a sample of one of the poems written from a girl's point of view:

You Want Chocolate Chip Cookies With That Order?

So let me get this straight:
it isn't me, it's
us you hate?
I should sweetly stand and wait
while you
bike, hike,
score, snore,
dunk, plunk,
drive, dive,
drum, strum,
and skate
and never question why you're late?
I don't remember making a proposal.
You think I was born to be at your disposal?

The interesting thing about this collection is the mix of poems it contains. In addition to free verse, there are tankas (an Asian form), sonnets (that second poem was one), quatrains, terza rima, poem for two voices, villanelle, and even a Vietnamese form known as luc bat, and the book both flags the form and (in the back) gives a brief explanation of what the form consists of.

Highly recommended for anyone interested in poetry, particularly in a variety of forms, and for anyone interested in trying to understand romantic relationships (which is probably everyone, yes?).

Unwind by Neal Shusterman

This isn’t a political blog, so no opinions will be expressed one way or another, but consider for a moment, if you will, abortion. As a guy, maybe you haven’t thought about it much, think the issue doesn’t really affect you. Maybe you have been very close to the issue or have even helped make a decision involving it. Maybe you know its out there, know that its something people fight, and even die, over, but haven’t formed your full opinion yet. Unwind byNeal Shusterman may or may not help you decide where you stand on the issue of abortion. To you, it may just be a fun, futuristic adventure story of policy taken to extreme. That’s fine—a story can transport you to another time, another place, get you into the heads of other people for a brief period of time, that’s why many of us love stories. But this is a story that can also lead you to some deeper thinking about your beliefs if you want it to.

In the action-packed novel Unwind, The Heartland War was fought over one issue: abortion. Instead of one side winning, there was a compromise: The Bill of Life. This new law states that no unborn children will be aborted, but when a child is between 13 and 17, parents (or the government) can choose to have them “unwound”-- killed, but with all of their limbs and organs donated to others who are sick or injured. This way they are “living on, in a divided state.” The propoganda and doublespeak involved in getting everyone to agree on this compromise must have been amazing! But Unwind doesn't dwell on how the government arrived at this policy, it focuses on the teenagers that the policy affects. The novel follows the stories of three teens who are about to be unwound: Connor runs away when he finds out his parents have signed the unwind order. Sure, he’s acted out some, but he hasn’t done anything bad enough to deserve this, has he? Risa lives in a state home for orphans, which, due to funding issues, cannot keep her there any more, and because (in their estimation) she has the lowest chance of being a productive citizen, she is chosen for unwinding (kind of gives a new meaning to budget cuts, eh?). Lev comes from a strictly religious family, one that believes in tithing—giving 10% of whatever they have back to God. This includes 10% of their children, and they have conceived Lev with the express purpose of tithing him by having him unwound when he turns 13. Lev has grown up knowing the purpose of his life, and believes he is fulfilling God’s will. He had a giant party—a combination of a bar mitzvah, graduation party, and wedding—before he left for the harvest camp, but is he really ready to face his death now? How strong is his faith, really? Connor, Risa, and Lev meet by chance when Connor tries to escape his fate, and now are on the run together, but they soon find that the lives of AWOL unwinds are very dangerous. From the underground railroad (a network of people who try to keep escapee unwinds safe until they turn 18), to a work camp for fugitives, to the harvest camp where the unwinding happens, this is an adventure that is also very scary and thought provoking.

If you like chilling science fiction novels that paint pictures of bleak futures that you secretly think just MIGHT really come to pass, give Unwind a try. Read it for the story, and if it gets you to thinking about what your informed opinion about abortion, well, that’s just a bonus. Shusterman is tough on the people on each side of the issue, really leaving you to make up your own mind. Neal Shusterman is quite the prolific writer, check out his home page for more on his numerous other books, as well as his writing for television, movies, and games.

Daemon Hall -- Andrew Nance

Ian Tremblin, horror writer extraordinaire, has offered the chance of a lifetime to aspiring teen authors: a contest in which the winner's book will be published.

The catch is this: the five finalists have to spend the night with Mr. Tremblin himself in the supposedly-haunted Daemon Hall. Anyone who leaves before the night is over will be disqualified.

No flashlights, cameras, cell phones or any other electronic devices are allowed. Candles are to be the only source of light.

Wade Reilly and four other students of varying ages are the finalists. When they enter Daemon Hall, they are expecting thrills and chills, but also some amount of scary fun. (Well, most of them think it will at least be kind of fun.) What they aren't expecting is pure terror, madness... and death.

Daemon Hall is a fast-paced, action-packed read. The format is actually similar to that old Are You Afraid of the Dark? show -- the characters take turns telling their stories, and occasionally the other characters will interrupt, so the focus flips back and forth frequently. The stories themselves sounded genuine -- like stories that I could certainly imagine teen authors creating -- and most of them suggested the influence of other authors, like Stephen King, R. L. Stine, and Richard Matheson, while the Daemon Hall frame story evoked Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None.

I didn't find it a perfect read -- the dialogue, especially, didn't feel right in a lot of places and the characters were sketched in pretty broad strokes -- but it was genuinely creepy and it moved along so quickly that the flaws weren't at all offensive. The strongest story, I thought, was Chelsea's "The Babysitter (Revisited)", partly because the screenplay format allowed me to really imagine this group of people sitting in a room in an huge mansion with only a few candles keeping the dark at bay.

Highly recommended to fans of Darren Shan and other quick creepy reads.

(cross-posted at Bookshelves of Doom)

Book Review- The Navigator and City of Time by Eoin McNamee

The Navigator and City of Time by Eoin McNamee

The Navigator summary: One day the world around Owen shifts oddly: Time flows backwards, and the world and family he knew disappear. Time can only be set right when the Resisters vanquish their ancient enemies, the Harsh. Unless they are stopped, everything Owen knows will vanish as if it has never been....And Owen discovers he has a terrifying role to play in this battle: he is the Navigator.

City of Time summary: Cati, the bold Watcher readers met in The Navigator, returns from the shadows of time to summon Owen and Dr. Diamond, for time is literally running out. The moon is coming closer to the earth, causing havoc with weather, tides, and other natural cycles; people fear the world will end. To discover what’s gone wrong, Cati, Owen, and the Doctor must take an astonishing journey to the City of Time, where time is bought and sold. There, Owen begins to understand his great responsibility and power as the Navigator.



I got the second book in this series (City of Time) in a big package that I got from Random House this past summer. So I had to find the first book and I couldn't find it in any bookstore, and while my local library had it, I didn't have the time to read an extra book. So finally, I went home for Christmas and at my old library, they had the audio books for both Navigator and City of Time. So I listened to both at work.

It's a good futuristic series and had some great suspense to it; I enjoyed the originality of McNamee's storyline. The characters were all really well-written and unique; I particularly enjoyed the characters of Katie and Owen. Kirby Heyborne did a great job reading the two novels and providing all the voices for the characters, which were all different and unique for easy identification. It's a fantastically woven story and I absolutely can't wait to read (or listen to) the third book, which will be out this June.

The third (and final) book is titled The Frost Child and will be released on June 9. You can pre-order a copy of The Frost Child from Amazon.

Perks of being a librarian

One of the benefits to a life of librarianship is access to advance reader copies of upcoming books. Sometimes publishers respond to requests for upcoming books (I got a box of The Dead and the Gone from Harcourt) sometimes they just send copies out to random people (I got The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks in an unmarked envelope). My library system has a shelf of Advance Readers Copies free for the taking and one of the best books I read last year (that just came out) was on it.

Peter Brown is an overworked doctor at the worst hospital in New York. One morning he witnesses a rat fighting a pigeon, is the victim of an attempted mugging, and has to choke down experimental amphetamines to stay awake. But his day only gets worse when he finds he knows one his patients, a New Jersey mobster dying of cancer. How does Peter know this mob boss? Because Peter Brown was once Pietro Brwna, a hit man with ties to organized crime now in the witness protection program. And the mobster thinks Peter is there to kill him.

This is the beginning of a literary drag race featuring mobsters, lost love and assassination by shark. Beat the Reaper is sardonic, clever, and bad-ass all the way through. This is no Sopranos episode about the conflict between family and the Family, it's straight-ahead acceleration driven by betrayal, revenge, and violence.

It reminded me more than a little of The Wheelman another stylish thriller about violence -fueled crime. Definitely recommended for older teens looking for something a little for dangerous and gritty than Theives Like Us.

I Should Really Just Relax

I've never been one to get real picky with the plausibility of my science fiction. Fiction is fictional. Whether or not you believe it's really possible to build a light saber, one thing you ought to know for sure is that Darth Vader isn't real. He's made up. So why shouldn't his light saber and his hyperspace-travelling fleet of starships be completely made up as well? Why would they have to be plausible? I mean we don't go around questioning whether Hades' helm of invisibility from the Greek myths is "plausible." My philosophy on this can be best summed up by the immortal words of the original Mystery Science Theater 3000 theme song (the one featuring Joel, not that other guy):

If you're wondering how he eats or sleeps
or other science facts
just say to yourself, "It's a TV show,
I should really just relax."

And yet . . . it wouldn't be science fiction without that pesky word "science" in it. Much science fiction does make predictions about the future, especially future technology. And it's both enlightening and fun to question how possible or plausible those predictions might be. Certainly many authors take this aspect of their fiction quite seriously. H.G. Wells predicted dozens of inventions that later became part of our reality, among them the tank and the credit card. Jules Verne's obscure 19th century novel Paris in the Twentieth Century predicts gas-powered automobiles, high-speed trains and the Internet. Many of his critics claimed his vision was ridiculous, impossible.

So, what could our contemporary writers and producers tell us about the future of technology and science? Could there really be a Death Star? Light sabres? Ray guns? An invisibility cloak? Warp drive? Time travel? Could we one day command "Beam me up?" and get teleported across space? Is any of this possible?

The answer to all of these questions, and most of the other ones that Michio Kaku asks in Physics of the Impossible, is "Yes." (It would be a pretty crappy book if it were "No.") None of these acheivements will be easy, and while scientists are close to realizing some of them, the complexities involved in acheiving others may prove to be insurmountable. But what is important to Kaku is that none of them violates the laws of physics as we currently understand them.

Kaku divides the "impossibilities" he discusses into three classes. Class I impossibilities are those which he believes will be achieved sometime in the next 10-300 years. Class II impossibilities are those which may not be acheivable for many thousands of years (if we continue on the technological path we are currently on). And Class III impossibilities are those which are really truly impossible, unless we discover that physics doesn't work the way physicists currently think it does.

It's surprising at times which common science fiction ideas fall into each category. Teleportation, for instance, would seem to be an extremely long way off, and the type that's practiced on Star Trek--transporting large, complex and even living objects like humans--may very well be. But simpler teleportation, the teleportation of individual particles and atoms has already been acheived. And Kaku predicts that the teleportation of molecules will likely be demonstrated sometime in the next several years. Who knows where that could lead?

On the other hand, I would think that handheld ray guns would be nearly acheivable now (we have laser pointers after all). But Kaku predicts that they are still a terribly far away. Today, we could build lasers powerful enough to blast holes in concrete, but the power required to generate that kind of beam equates to a nuclear power plant's worth of energy. Kaku believes that we won't soon see a palm-sized nuclear power plant.

Kaku is a prominent physicist and on issues dealing largely with physics he is at his clearest and most comprehensive. For example, he challenges one of the primary dictates of special relativity: that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. He points out that in quantum theory information travels faster than light all the time. (Unfortunately it seems that only useless information has this capability.) But even for more substantial things like people and spaceships, faster-than-light travel may be possible by creating wormholes in space-time. However, the potential traveller would need to gather or produce the energy of a star in order to even crack a wormhole open.

Likewise, on invisibility Kaku has quite a bit of fascinating information to share. He describes experiments in which small objects have already been made invisible to microwave radiation, by bending the radiation around the object. Kaku thinks scientists will be able to make an object invisible to visible light of at least one color within a decade, but it will be quite some time before anyone will be able to offer Harry Potter a replacement for his prized cloak.

In areas further from his specialty, however, Kaku is sketchier. I was particularly disappointed with the section on telepathy. Kaku clearly relates both the charlatan-infested history of telepathy and the more scientific developments in "mind reading" through monitoring brain activity using MRI machines (these, unlike ray guns, may soon be hand held) and creating a vocabularly to translate thoughts into words. All this is fascinating and well-researched but Kaku movew on to something else before considering the possibility of using brain implants to either broadcast thoughts or receive broadcasts of others thoughts. (Anyone who reads widely in the genre knows such implants are staples of science fiction.)

On the subject of alien visitors Kaku is similarly uninspiring, predicting that an intelligent alien species would probably be much like us, with eyes on the front of its head to provide stereoscopic vision and evolving from a species with predatory tendencies, rather than from herbivores. This all makes sense, but relies on the rather large assumption that life (and more importantly, intelligence) on other planets would evolve similarly to life on Earth. Why for instance, would an alien even have a head or eyes, if something else proved more adpative to its particular other-worldly environment? Would alien species even be so easily divided into plants and animals? Would the classification of herbivores and carnivores even make sense on another planet? Kaku doesn't go there.

Kaku situates each impossibility firmly in both the history of science and contemporary culture, citing past scientific research and discussion as well as myths, legends, psuedo-science, films, novels and television. While his knowledge is broad and ranges from Greek mythology to the Back to the Future series of movies, he does rely prehaps a bit too heavily on Star Trek references. Even more discouraging is that he's one of those Kirk/Spock guys who apparently never moved on from the original series.

Kaku's real agenda though, hidden in plain sight, isn't to talk about what's possible or impossible in science fiction; it's to introduce the reader to both the ideas and people behind the work being done in contemporary physics. And as such he provides a pretty good primer, introducing the reader to the priniciples of special and general relativity, quantum mechanics, the search for a Theory of Everything and strange new worlds of superstring and M theory. Wherever this hidden agenda emerges, Kaku veers off in pursuit of it, often leaving behind the impossible techonology he is discussing. This habit is entirely forgiveable, as he always wanders only into more fascinating territory, following the word "impossible" wherever it may lead.

For an interesting interview with the author see: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/HanselminutesPodcast101DrMichioKakuOnThePhysicsOfTheImpossible.aspx

For a video featuring the author discussing time travel:
http://www.livescience.com/common/media/video/player.php?videoRef=Time_travel_lite

"They're disappointed in their progress...their possibilities. But they don't know what to do. They don't know how to get out of this situation."

Guys Lit Wire favorite, Walter Dean Myers has a new book Dope Sick due out this month. Here's the description:

Lil J has lived through the layers of pain that are so difficult for inner city youngsters to transcend and has been exposed to an astonishing array of drugs. His path from "brokesick" to "dopesick" leads to a drug deal gone bad and a shot undercover cop. Lil J suddenly finds himself in an abandoned crack house with a bullet wound to the arm. He would do anything to change the last 24 hours. That possibility becomes real when he stumbles into Kelly, who is set up in front of a TV set with remote control, about to provide Lil J the opportunity to assess and confront his own existence and ultimately, a chance to change the direction of his life.

You can download the first three chapters for free at the Adolescent Literacy web site and also read an interview with Myers at Public School Insights. Here's a bit of that:

When I see that 50 percent of African-American kids don't finish high school, that's a crisis of tremendous weight to me. These kids are not finishing high school. They're not getting the core knowledge of how to conduct their lives and how to move on. As far as I'm concerned, from a national point of view as an American, we have to rescue these kids. We have to reverse this. We have to go into these communities and turn this around.

The first thing we have to do is change the norm. When these kids go to school, their norm is depressed. It's been dislocated downward. So they have these low expectations of themselves--not of their abilities, but of what's acceptable. So if a kid gets C's and D's, it's fine. It's okay. Because in his community, C's and D's are the norm. There are many schools in the New York area and New Jersey where the norm for the school is not to graduate high school. We have to change that.

I think Obama, because he doesn't have to be as politically correct as a white president, can approach this. And he has to. He has to. Because these kids are coming through schools… The pictures that I see are not even as good as the dismal figures which are being published.

It's a great interview from someone what has been writing about teens and talking to them and working with them for decades. Here's hoping that some of the tragic circumstances he discusses in the interview will finally change for the better.

Undead Austen, celebrating Darwin and more

First, I kid you not, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies It features "... the original text of Jane Austen's beloved novel with all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie action."

If you think Bruce Springsteen is awesome (as any music lover should), check out his bookshelves. (The titles are taken from a shot in the current issue of Rolling Stone.)

Sir David Attenborough has a few thoughts for creationists who send him hate mail as he celebrates Darwin's multiple anniversaries this month:

Telling the magazine that he was asked why he did not give "credit" to God, Attenborough added: "They always mean beautiful things like hummingbirds. I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in east Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs. I find that hard to reconcile with the notion of a divine and benevolent creator."

You can read more about Darwin online in the current issue of Smithsonian and in two articles in National Geographic. (And in my February column which will go online next week at Bookslut.) (And one of the more interesting sounding new books out on this subject that I haven't had a chance to read is Darwin's Garden by Michael Boulter. It's one to keep an eye out for.)

Finally, steampunk fans need to keep their eyes peeled for The Affinity Bridge by George Man. From a recent Tor post: "The book follows the adventures of Maurice Newbury, detective for the Crown, and his assistant, Ms. Veronica Hobbes, a team who sit somewhere between a classic Sherlock Holmes and Watson pairing and that of Doctor Who’s Doctor and one of his more capable companions. They inhabit a wonderfully-realized steampunk London, replete with clockwork butlers, airships in the skies, and zombies in Whitechapel."

It's due from Tor in July.