'The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man' is hilarious, fun and exciting

I recently finished reading an outstanding new novel by Mark Hodder called “The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man,” which was released on March 22.

If you like sci-fi/fantasy fiction set in Victorian times, aka, steampunk, you’ll really enjoy this book.

Published by Pyr, “The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man” is the second book in Hodder’s hilarious, fun and exciting “Burton and Swinburne Series.” It’s also the sequel to his award-winning 2010 novel, “The Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack.”

Both novels feature fictionalized versions of Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton and Algernon Charles Swinburne as the main characters. In real life, Burton was a larger-than-life British explorer and Swinburne was a famous poet. In Hodder’s novels, Burton is all of the things he was in real life as well as an agent of the king. Swinburne is Burton’s oft-drunk, humorously depraved, yet highly capable and competent, sidekick.

“The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man” is set in 1862, a short time after the events in “The Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack.” A patrolling policeman discovers a brass, clockwork man in Trafalgar Square, and Burton and Swinburne are called in to help investigate. They soon find themselves on the hunt for a set of mysterious, black diamonds that are believed to be pieces of a meteorite that fell to earth in ancient times.

Their search eventually entangles them in the real-life case of the Tichborne Claimant, which involved an imposter from Australia named Arthur Orton, who traveled to England and claimed to be Sir Roger Tichborne. Tichborne was the heir to the Tichborne Baronetcy, but he went missing at sea at the age of 25 while on a ship bound from Brazil to New York. The case of the Tichborne Claimant was the media sensation of its day. To read more about this interesting legal case, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tichborne_Case.

Before it’s all said and done in “The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man,” Burton and Swinburne discover a plot to topple the British government. On the way to the book’s finale, they cross paths with such remarkable characters as Charles Babbage, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Charles Doyle, Florence Nightingale, Grigori Rasputin, Herbert Spencer, Henry Morton Stanley and Oscar Wilde.

As mentioned, this book is the sequel to “The Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack,” which won the 2010 Philip K. Dick Award. You don’t have to read the first book to enjoy the second, but I highly recommend that you read both of them in order to get the full effect. You won’t be disappointed, I assure you.

For those of you who have read the first two books in the Burton and Swinburne Series, you’ll be happy to hear that a third installment in the series, “Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon,” is set for release on Jan. 24, 2012.

In the end, how many of you have had the chance to read “The Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack” or “The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man”? What did you think about them? Let us know in the comments section below.