Book Giveaway Contest: The Secret of Abdu El Yezdi

We have another Burton & Swinburne adventure to give away to some lucky person!

 

 

Three years ago, we started our review of The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack, the first book in Mark Hodder’s series, thusly:

 --

 In the middle of this place and time -- London, 1861, to be exact -- Mark Hodder places explorer Richard Burton and poet Algernon Swinburne as the protagonists of a wonderful tale. It begins as one would expect a normal story involving Burton to begin, with him planning to debate John Speke at the Royal Geographical Society...but then there is violence and chaos, and Burton takes the atmospheric railway home and receives a message by greyhound which... 

Wait, what?

 ----

 Now, in The Secret of Abdu El Yezdi, the action begins in 1859. Richard Burton has just discovered the source of the Nile, and is on his way back to England aboard the airship Orpheus to meet his Royal Highness Prince Albert, when…

 

Wait, what?

 

As you can tell, reality has shifted once again, and Burton is about to discover that nothing is quite what it seems…or what it once was…or what it might be.  Reading the earlier books is definitely recommended, although this is, in a way, a new adventure, with different characters (and some wonderful historical cameos). For those of us entranced with Hodder’s fantastical Victoriana – or is it Albertiana? -- it’s a welcome return.

 

 

We have an advance reader copy of The Secret of Abdu El Yezdi to give away! To enter the contest, post a comment below and talk to us about the poets of the Victorian era. Are you a fan of Swinburne? Do you have a bone to pick with one or more Rossettis? Let us know! The deadline for entering is Sunday, November 17. Good luck!

 

More information on The Secret of Abdu El Yezdi is available, along with an excerpt, at Pyr’s website. More information on author Mark Hodder can be found on his website.

Comments

[Gerard Quinn]

Thanks for another contest. My "bone to pick" is the general inattention to American poets of the era. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. qualifies as a steampunk poet in my opinion, with The Wonderful One-horse Shay a nice rumination upon, inter alia, technology that abruptly goes kablooey:

Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay,
That was built in such a logical way
It ran a hundred years to a day,
And then, of a sudden, it— ah, but stay,
And I'll tell you what happened without delay,
Scaring the parson into fits,
Frightening people out of their wits,
Have you ever heard of that, I say?
...
End of the wonderful one-hoss shay,
Logic is logic. That's all I say.

[D Tucker]

While not considered "high poetry", I cannot imagine where we would be without the influence of Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll. Probably no Shel Silverstein, Dr. Seuss, or Roald Dahl - among many others. Children's literature would be decades behind where it is, and the world would be a bleaker place.

[Jude]

I am a huge fan of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Anyone who likes the likes of E.E. Cummings is bound to find a familiar mind with Hopkins. Most of the Victorians seem to be Romantics, with rather fixed styles and high language; Hopkins likes to experiment with new forms, unusual combinations of words and sounds, and interesting imagery.

[Professor Moniker]

My daughter loves The Flyaway Horse by Eugene Field which is squarely in the era. I've always had a soft spot for Poe, which is somewhat pre/early Victorian era, mostly from my angsty teenage days but I do really enjoy his short stories too. The Gold Bug is still one of my favorite mystery stories.