Interesting book ( )

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Title: Reggiecide
Series: Reeves & Worcester Steampunk Mysteries #2
Author: Chris Dolley
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Steampunk Mystery
Pages: 68
Words: 21.5K

Synopsis:

From the Publisher

Guy Fawkes is back and this time it's a toss up who's going to be blown up first - Parliament or Reginald Worcester, gentleman consulting detective.

But Guy might not be the only regicide to have been dug up and reanimated. He might be a mere pawn in a plan of diabolical twistiness.

Only a detective with a rare brain - and Reggie's is amongst the rarest - could possibly solve this 'five-cocktail problem.' With the aid of Reeves, his automaton valet, Emmeline, his suffragette fiancée, and Farquharson, a reconstituted dog with an issue with Anglicans, Reggie sets out to save both Queen Victoria and the Empire.

My Thoughts:

I laughed almost the entire way through this book. Dolley has captured the spirit of PG Wodehouse and while I won't say he's improved it, he's distilled it to its essence and captured it in under 100 pages. I hadn't even realized how short it was until I went looking for the data. It didn't feel like a long book but it still felt like a complete story. That takes some talent as far as I'm concerned.

I do like that Reggie is affianced and not a single guy bumbling around. So far there have been no marriage proposal shenanigans and I'm guessing Dolley is staying away from that particular aspect of the original Jeeves & Wooster. Emmeline makes for a great catalyst to “make things happen” as she's a spitfire, dynamite and ball of wax all rolled into one.

A small part of me wants to complain that these novellas about Reeves & Worcester aren't long enough, but if I am being honest, they are just the right length. Long enough to be funny but not so long that they wear out the humor and send the reader off in a bad mood.

★★★★☆ ( )

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a chap in possession of a suffragette fiancée is in need of a pair of bolt cutters." ( )

I did not request this book but somehow won a copy of t. I did not request it because I actively dislike alternate history fantasy stories. Despite all this, having been sent a free cy to review, I tried to read it. The writing was average with nothing remarkable enough to hold my interest over the active dislike for the genre so in the first few chapters, zi gave up. I am not assigning a rating because I don't feel I read enough to fairly judge it and a fan of the genre might actually have foundmit interesting. I was bored. I think fans of historical romance might also enjoy this title because although I dislike period pieces, I did think the descriptive narratives successfully painted clear word pictures.

(Note: I received a free review copy of this through LibraryThing Early Reviewers.) An entertaining steampunk pastiche of Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster stories. It's one of a series of shortish stories about gentleman private detective and silly ass Reggie Worcester, his automaton valet Reeves, and his fiancee Emmeline, In this one, the chaps have to investigate the disappearance of Guy Fawkes, who has been revived as a Promethean by one of his descendents. Alas, Fawkes has but one thought left in his head... I found that it worked well even though I hadn't read the earlier stories. Good fun if you like speculative fiction and Wodehouse. ( )