'Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon' is as impressive as they come

I recently finished reading an outstanding new novel by award-winning author Mark Hodder called “Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon,” which was released on Jan. 24.

If you enjoy reading alternative history, fantasy and science fiction set in Victorian times, what’s now commonly referred to as “steampunk,” you’ll definitely enjoy this highly entertaining, 399-page book.

Published by Pyr, “Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon” is the third book in Hodder’s fast-paced, rip-roaring “Burton and Swinburne” series of novels. The second book in the series, “The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man” was released last March, and the first book in the series was the award-winning 2010 novel, “The Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack.”

All three 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 diplomat, explorer, scholar, soldier and swordsman who spoke 29 languages. He was James Bond, Batman, Conan the Barbarian, Alan Quartermain and Ernest Hemingway all rolled into one.

In Hodder’s novels, Burton is all of the things he was in real life – and a special agent to the king. Swinburne, a famous redheaded poet in real life, is Burton’s oft-drunk, comically weird, yet highly capable and competent, wingman.

“Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon” is set mostly in an alternate version of 1863 in which Burton and Swinburne are dealing with the aftereffects of a successful attempt on a young Queen Victoria’s life. The true course of history is altered and the result is an impending war that threatens to wipe out Great Britain and her allies. British leaders hope to avoid the war if Burton and company can get their hands on a set of mystical, black diamonds that are deep in the mountainous jungles of Africa. Of course, a rival German expedition is trying to get to the diamonds first, and the resulting story is one that you can hardly put down.

Throughout the novel, Burton and Swinburne cross paths with a number of remarkable real-life Victorian characters, including Sidi Bombay, Aleister Crowley, William Samuel Henson (the inventor of the modern safety razor), Jane Digby, Mtyela Kasanda, Isabella Mayson, Richard Monckton Milnes, John Hanning Speke, Herbert Spencer, George Herbert Wells, Francis Herbert Wenham, Oscar Wilde and Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin.

Keep in mind that this book follows “The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man” and “The Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack,” which won the 2010 Philip K. Dick Award. You don’t have to read the first two books to enjoy the third, but I highly recommend that you read them all in order to get the full effect. I assure you that you won’t be disappointed. I read 46 books during the 2011 calendar year, and I can say, hands down, that “The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man” and “The Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack” were the best books that I read in all of last year.

In the end, when it comes to great books and even better stories, “Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon” is as impressive as they come, and I only hope that it’s not the final book in Hodder’s “Burton and Swinburne” series of novels.