The Affinity Bridge by George Mann

Ah ‘Steampunk’ a term that fills me with equal parts interest and bafflement. Despite several people I know raving about the genre I had never read a steampunk novel. Although I did get a copy of the Extraordinary engines anthology from Solaris Books it has remained firmly at the bottom of my reading pile for some time.

However one of my friends highly recommended the new book from George Mann, the Affinity Bridge and I figured it was now or never to give Steampunk a go. Plus I was going away for the weekend and needed a book to read.

I thought it was great! I thought it was a great read and the author did a great job of bringing the fog covered dangerous city of Victorian London to life and the ‘new technology’ of airships, ground trains and clockwork robots seem a natural part of the setting and not just ‘tacked’ onto Victorian London.

However this isn’t to say that the book doesn’t have it flaws. A lot of references to other ‘adventures’ and other characters simply scream “ you’ll find out about this later in the series” where they could have been a lot more subtle. Also in a couple of places the author does tend to waffle to the extent that I found myself skipping over a few pages to get to something interesting. But to be fair the authors writing gets a lot more confident as the book goes on and the ending is as solid as you could wish for.

Still for a first novel I think this was a good effort and there is great potential here for a solid series. I will certainly be getting the next book.

Three out of five.