Railroad Volume 1: Rodger Dodger
by Tonia Brown
ASIN:
B0059HC0IO
Steampunk is a genre that for the last
few years I have found especially intriguing, at least on the
esthetic level. I haven't read nearly enough to hop on the
steam-powered bandwagon, but I count myself as a prospective fan. For
me, I just want a rollicking good time, and in the case of Tonia
Brown's Railroad, I got just
that.
This novella is the opening salvo in
what promises to be an especially weird western. Rodger
Dodger introduces us to the
title character as he answers an open call for a security officer on
board a train called the Sleipnir. For a gunslinger on the run from
his past, a job on a train might sound downright cozy, but when he
meets its eccentric owner--and inventor--Professor Hieronymus J.
Dittmeyer, and discovers the train navigates across the wild west
without using conventional railroads, Dodger wonders if he's bitten
off more than he can chew.
Dodger on his own
didn't strike me as all that compelling a character, but that's
mainly because there's so little about him that's revealed in the
first half of the book. He's a quiet, no-nonsense sort with a bit of
charm and a lot of history in his wake that revisits him later in the
book, but there wasn't quite enough to make him stand out as the star
of the story. The absence of a hook there is compensated with a trio
of strange and comical characters aboard the Sleipnir. There's the
professor who seems a tad out of touch with polite society, having
spent much of his time in recent years aboard his train, and
seemingly evading unsavory characters. There's his robotic
butler-of-sorts, Mr. Torque, a clockwork servant with a dry wit and
resigned tolerance for his bewildering boss. And then there's the
chief engineer, Ched, who gave me the impression that he's a zombie,
thought that's never said outright. I just assume as much given his
appearance--and odor.
The
book definitely feels like the introduction to a series, and I often
enjoy the setup of a wayward antihero joining forces with a band of
misfits. The book offered enough excitement and enough
characterization to pull me in, but made it plain that the real
chills and spills will come later in the series, as evidenced by a
band of outlaws who cross paths with the train and its crew. I was
effectively charmed by what Tonia has got here and I am certainly
going to need to make room on my reading pile for the second volume
of Railroad.
It pleases me to no end that you enjoyed it so much. I hope the rest of the series is to your liking. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteWhat can I say. I'm a sucker for six-shooters and robots.
ReplyDelete