Title Whitechapel Gods Series --- Author S.M. Peters Cover Art --- Publisher Roc - 2008 First Printing Roc - 2008 Category Steampunk Warnings --- Main Characters Oliver, Tom, Missy, John Scared, Baron Hume, Grandfather Clock, Mama Engine Main Elements Gods, steampunk, dystopia

In Victorian London, the Whitechapel section has been cut off, enclosed by an impassable wall, and is now ruled by two mysterious mechanical gods. Mama Engine is the goddess of sentiment, a mother to her believers. Grandfather Clock represents logic and precision.

A few years have passed since the Uprising, when humans fought the gold cloaks, the black cloaks, and even the vicious Boiler Men, the brutal police force responsible for keeping humans in check. Today, Whitechapel is a mechanized, steam-driven hell. But a few brave veterans of the Uprising have formed a new resitance, and they are gathering for another attack. For now they have a secret weapon that may finally free them...or kill them.

I'll admit, the cover is what got me when I found this in a used bookstore. And when I took a quick look through the Goodreads reviews, I wasn't expecting anything all that good. And yet, oddly enough, I found myself quite enjoying, for the exact reason that many people didn't get past the first few chapters.

As a reader, you have to work a bit to get into this book. It follows a show don't tell, which is usually good, after all I didn't want to go through pages and pages of explanation of how the world worked, which is what the other readers seemed to want. Because it wouldn't make sense, most of the characters grew up in this world, they don't go around thinking or talking about it on a daily basis because they already know it, so we only learn about what happened to Whitechapel, of it's architecture and neighbourhoods and its denizens as the need arises to interact with them. So yes, you spend a certain about of time wanting to know more, but it comes if you keep reading.

And this Whitechapel is like Steampunk on steroids, and it was kind of what I was looking for in a steampunk book. This world doesn't just have the occasional airship pirate or some steam driven machine, the entire city is a giant steampunk character in it's own right, almost organically grown, built on multiple layers with catwalks and towers and not necessarily any logical sense because the machine here, well they just aren't artificial intelligences, Grandfather Clock and Mama Engine are gods. I'm not quite sure exactly how they interact with their minions, in a cyberpunk world it be some VR thing or nanotech, here its more a kind of telepathy, maybe some kind of aether thing, but it worked for me, especially since I was looking for a book with gods in it, and these were literally god-like entities, but very much not human.

As for the denizens, there are quite a few to keep straight. There are regular humans, literally dying from all the pollution in the air (where does steam come from in a steampunk world? Coal of course). There are people with a disease call the Clacks, where metal starts taking over their body, which didn't make any sense but was steampunk cool just the same, after all in a clockwork world, what other kind of disease would you expect? The Canaries or Gold Cloaks are the partially human clockwork minions of Grandfather Clock, tasked to keep order. The Crows or Black Cloaks were the religious zealots of Mama Engine, replacing their hearts with a furnace, doing her will. There is Baron Hume who is in thrall to both and has lost so much of his humanity he can only speak in riddles, and he leads the Boiler Men, purely mechanical beings and most feared of all since nothing can kill them. Then there are the humans who want to revolt for freedom, and those that want a revolt so they can be made gods in place of the machines, there are mechanical animals such as hounds or clickrats, and there is...something...else at play as well.

It's complicated, but that made it interesting. Here steampunk wasn't just a backdrop to a fantasy story, here the steam and clockwork and boilers and bizarre weapons and insane architecture were front and center and made for amazing worldbuilding in a region of London that is nothing like the London we know today.

But there was a Goodreads complaint I had to agree with. Women were mostly lacking, and of the three that were there, one was a prostitute who can't stop herself from killing and tends to mess up more than she helps the protagonists, a sadistic madame who trained said prostitute, and an insane mechanical goddess who takes as much pleasure from being raped as she is furious about it. Now I'm not someone who believes every book needs a strong female lead, but at least toss in a competent one! On the other hand, it wasn't like I was all that impressed with the guys, there was a wide variety of personalities, but to be fair, I didn't read this book for character growth, I expected a kind of horror adventure thing which is what it was.

I saved this book for October since just by the cover I figured it would be kind of dark and creepy and it worked well as a Halloween read even if if didn't have standard monsters of werewolves and vampires. But insane machine gods and disease where random metal bits start growing in your body, or a labyrinthine city with monsters lurking in the shadows with metal teeth and funace eyes? Those can be a source of nightmares as well. Frankly, I would love to see this made into a movie since the visuals would be stunning, especially if they focused on the steampunk and didn't go overboard with the gore and the horror. I mean, just look at that cover!