'Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack' is a steampunk classic

I finished reading “The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack” by Mark Hodder last night and found it to be the most entertaining book that I’ve read in a long time.

The winner of the 2010 Philip K. Dick Award, this 373-page book was published in September 2010 by Pyr Books and provides us with a highly entertaining explanation of the Spring Heeled Jack mystery.

For those of you unfamiliar with this English boogeyman, you’ll be interested to know that the first reported sighting of Spring Heeled Jack occurred in London in 1837 and sporadic reports have followed up to as late as 1997. Witnesses say that he can jump extraordinarily high and descriptions of his appearance vary widely from “devilish” to “gentlemanly.” For more information about this mysterious character, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_Heeled_Jack.

In “The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack,” Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton and sidekick, Algernon Charles Swinburne, find themselves on the trail of the infamous Spring Heeled Jack. (In real life, Burton was a famous British explorer and Swinburne was a famous poet.) Along the way, they find themselves in a story that seemingly has it all – two-fisted action, albinos, assassinations, cat men, Charles Darwin, chimney sweeps, Florence Nightingale, fortune tellers, grave robbing, gun play, mesmerism, messenger parrots, numerous pubs, Oscar Wilde, Queen Victoria, secret societies, Scotland Yard, Somali warriors, sword-fighting, time travel, suicide, werewolves, etc., etc.

Aside from all that, I enjoyed the book for two more reasons. It introduced me to Sir Richard Francis Burton and the steampunk genre.

Prior to reading Hodder’s book, I’d never heard of Burton, who was a real life, larger than life character, widely known during his time as an accomplished author, cartographer, diplomat, explorer, fencer, geographer, linguist, poet, soldier, spy and translator. He reportedly spoke 29 languages and wrote (or translated) almost 50 books and hundreds of journal and magazine articles. He died in 1890. Look for more on Burton later this week.

As previously mention, “The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack” was also the first true “steampunk” book I’ve read (and now I’m hooked). For those of you unfamiliar with steampunk, it’s a genre of fiction that combines alternate history, science fiction and speculative fiction. Think “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” meets “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” with healthy doses of Sherlock Holmes and Van Helsing tossed in. Again, look for more on steampunk later this week.

Those of you who have had the pleasure of reading “The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack” will be pleased to hear that this is the first book in a planned trilogy of novels staring Burton and Swinburne. The second installment, “The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man,” was released on March 22, and the third book, “Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon,” will be released on Nov. 22. If those two books are as good as the first, then readers are in for a treat.

In the end, how many of you have had the chance to read “The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack”? What did you think about it? What was your favorite part? Let us know in the comments section below.