Larklight Novel Review

Posted by on September 29th,2007

Larklight by Messers Reeve and Wyatt

The sequel to Larklight, the young-at-heart-person’s novel set in possibly the most delightfully Steampunk solarsystem, is called Starcross, and much to my surprise the nice people at Amazon saw fit to furnish me with my preordered copy almost a week before I expected it.  Hurrah!

Once again following the adventures of the Mumby family and their very dear friends, what was initially set to be a delightful retreat from the chaos of redecorating a ramshackle orbital home becomes something much more sinister and thrilling!  The hotel Starcross is an example of refined opulence and where your every need is catered to by custom made automatons, but through unnatural phenomena the hotel and its guests are cut off from the outside world and a double ‘murder’ is discovered.  With aether pirates, secret agents, space trains, perfectly wonderful Hats (the best in the known galaxy), time travel, rousing rowdy drinkinghall songs, and enemies both familiar and new – this is most definitely an excellent continuation of the Larklight trilogy.  If you’ve ever wished you could spot and name a hundred inhabited asteroids and hunt giant icthyomorphs from the luxury cabin of your trans-aether steamtrain, then you’ll be in good hands. I did feel that once again that when one or other of the parents were in the scene, that the book fell a little flat – as parents do have a terrible habit of taking over and doing everything right, just like in real life.  I would also highly recommend that Starcross should not be read in isolation, but as a continuation of Larklight – there are several characters that could possibly confuse, otherwise.  However I still very happily commend it to anyone who fancies some exciting and wonderous adventure, beautifully and richly illustrated, in a wonderfully realised Steampunk universe.  I look forward to the third in the series – Mothstorm! (Starcross: UK/US Amazon. Larklight: US/US Amazon. These links are affiliated, your hood not winked by me.)