Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear (2015)
Full of character
Book cover blurb
"You ain't gonna like what I have to tell you, but I'm gonna tell you anyway. See, my name is Karen Memery, like memory only spelt with an e, and I'm one of the girls what works in the Hôtel Mon Cherie on Amity Street. 'Hôtel' has a little hat over the o like that. It's French, so Beatrice tells me."
Set in the late nineteenth century-in a city a lot like what we now call Seattle Underground-when airships plied the trade routes, would-be gold miners were heading to the gold fields of Alaska, and steam-powered mechanicals stalked the waterfront, Karen is a young woman on her own, is making the best of her orphaned state by working in Madame Damnable's high-quality bordello. Through Karen's eyes we get to know the other girls in the house-a resourceful group-and the poor and the powerful of the town.
Trouble erupts one night when a badly injured girl arrives at their door, begging sanctuary, followed by the man who holds her indenture, and who has a machine that can take over anyone's mind and control their actions. And as if that wasn't bad enough, the next night brings a body dumped in their rubbish heap-a streetwalker who has been brutally murdered.
Hard on the heels of that horrifying discovery comes a lawman who has been chasing this killer for months. Marshal Bass Reeves is closing in on his man, and he's not about to reject any help he can get, even if it comes from girl who works in the Hôtel Mon Cheri.
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My Review
Ok, another book I have a love-hate relationship with.
But don't get me wrong, this is a good book. It has an interesting cast of characters, an intriguing location and a really nice flow to the story. The time period and character of the protagonist really come across in the voice of the first-person point of view. The main character being female was a big plus I thought, and gave the story a lot more interest than I think would have been given by the usual macho male lead. All of this I really liked.
One criticism I did have was the fact that we only get small glimpses of the main bad guy at the beginning and the end of the book. This just wasn't enough to feel real menace or threat from him, in my opinion.
This was my first foray into the genre of steampunk, at least in novel form, and I was hoping to be more immersed in the technology and general world it drove, but we were offered little of that here, possibly because of the book being in first-person point of view. I was also hoping for a little more sci-fi and not so much Wild West, but, of course, that is no fault of the book.
So, basically, this is a great book, it just wasn't quite what I was looking for. But I like it enough to convince me to buy another two sci-fi offerings from Elizabeth Bear, Ancestral Night and Machine, and I have very high hopes for these...watch this space.
My copy of this novel
Tor hardback edition.
Published in 2015
346 pages
ISBN 9780765375247