Publishers Weekly
Hapless hero George Dower is swept up in plots and schemes beyond his ken in this rollicking sequel to the steampunk classic Infernal Devices. Broke and living in an isolated rural village, George has done his best to avoid the world that has been transformed by his father’s incredible inventions. Unfortunately, the world hasn’t forgotten about him. Hamuel Stonebrake, senior vicar in a church dedicated to spreading Christianity to whales, wants George to help him find the Vox Universalis, a legendary universal translator machine built by George’s dad. Soon George is caught between Prime Minister Agatha “Iron Lady” Fletcher, who is “more steam engine than woman,” and a ruthless cabal of wealthy London steam barons, “ferric sex” entrepreneurs, and stock speculators. 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. (Oct.)
From the Publisher
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
“A full-bodied rambunctious adventure of preposterous proportions that is full of knowing when it comes to people and weird contraptions.”
– Strange Alliances
“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
PRAISE FOR THE GEORGE DOWER TRILOGY:
“Its warped humor, digs at steampunk literature, and sheer tonnage of weirdness conveyed through Dower’s polite Victorian speech combine to create an unnerving tale that is also, at turns, incisive and deliciously twisted. It’s a horror novel in which the monster is, in fact, the whole world, and the inevitable march of steam-powered progress, issuing both a brutal epitaph to the genre Jeter helped bring to prominence, and a challenge for others to push it into stranger waters. From one of the masters of the form, we should expect nothing less.”
– Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog
"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
author of The Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences ser Tee Morris
Welcome to K.W. Jeter's London, a London where technology is out of control and ruled by the upper class. Part commentary for the 21st century, part journey of redemption (but entirely steampunk), Fiendish Schemes takes us into the next chapter of George Dower's presently dismal life until an unwanted, unwelcome associate from his past (literally) resurfaces and sets him on a dangerous plot that could manipulate the financial future of the world, and--in the process--net him a bob or two. Jeter is a modern Arthur Conan Doyle as his sequel to Infernal Devices reads as a Sherlock Holmes adventure. Each turn of the page unfolds the mystery; and the deeper you descend with Dower, the deeper you are drawn into Jeter's work.
Kirkus Reviews
2013-09-01
Belated sequel to Infernal Devices (1987), the iconic Victorian fantasy for which the author himself coined the term "steampunk." George Dower, the timid and not very knowledgeable ex-owner of a repair shop in Clerkenwell, has been rusticating far from London while gambling away the money he gained by selling the remarkable (and to George, largely incomprehensible) clockwork contrivances of his late father to the Royal Society. Finally broke, he's invited to attend the unveiling of a steam-powered walking lighthouse, a critical component of which was invented by George's father. George fails to understand why anybody would need a walking lighthouse. As Lord Fusible of Phototrope Limited explains, the seas themselves are intelligent, and their tides ebb and flow according to their own mysterious purposes. What better way to outfox the Sea & Light Book betting agency than to walk the lighthouses to where they're needed? Moreover, if George can locate his father's Vox Universalis, communication with the seas might be established. Tempted by the prospect of large amounts of money, George agrees to help. But the world has changed since his self-imposed exile: Vast steam pipes emanating from the Lake District steam mines snake across the countryside; London is a hissing, steam-enshrouded madhouse whose inhabitants have been enticed into ever more bizarre modes of expression. Who is the fabled Iron Lady? And what, exactly, are her intentions? Though the plot--improbable, even by steampunk standards--of this intricate yarn runs out of, er, steam, about three-quarters of the way through, there's plenty of humor to keep things churning. And U.K.-savvy readers will recognize certain rather scalding satirical elements. An impressive enterprise that moves very, very slowly.
