Book Review: Court Of The Air by Stephen Hunt

So here we go folks. Allow me to start off with one of the greatest disappointments of my life. You see, anyione who knows me will know how much I love Steampunk and anything Victorian. So imagine my excitement when I saw that a book involving high adventure in an alternative Victorian landscape was hitting the shelves.

Now, let me start off by saying this is not set in a Victorian landscape nor is it steampunk. Nor does it have a point.

Basically it is set in a fictional land called The Kingdom Of Jackals, where politics appear to consist of blowing up your subjects and beating the hell out of one another with sticks. A revolution is in the air, and what kind of revolution? Well..actually its never explained. But a BAD one nonetheless. We meet our two main characters; Molly - an ex (child?) prostitute, and Oliver; a boring, melodramatic bitch with a wizard uncle.

After the initial introduction of the characters, and after what is actually quite a good start, the story decides to abandon this mortal realm.

From this point on words are invented with reckless abandon, as if the author decided 'You know what, there just arent enough words in the English language to get my point across. Lets get a-keyboard bashing!'

Entire sentences are mutilated merely by the addition of races, objects, countries that are mentioned but never explained. We are supposed to assume that it all makes sense, but it never does.

I enjoy sci fi settings as much as the next guy. But for the love of God at least EXPLAIN TO THE READER what all of this is about. How is one supposed to engross oneself in a 'living, breathing world' when no attempt is made to invite us into it? As I read I felt like the plot was being hidden from me,a punishment for not being the author and sharing his mind.

So in short. If you like mechanical men and boring lead characters, and suffering a brain aneurism every fifteen minutes, then this is definately for you.

Unfortunately I guess I am just too dumb to share the authors artistic vision. So I'm afraid that this book just didnt do it for me. At all.

John.