The Secret of Abdu El Yezdi

May 27, 2013
Hodder’s fourth Burton and Swinburne steampunk adventure is set in an imaginative alternate 1859, but mediocre characterization and historical name-dropping are all that pass for plot development. Legendary explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton is returning home from adventures abroad when one of his shipboard companions is murdered in a bizarre ritual. As several notable figures go missing, including Florence Nightingale and Charles Babbage, Sir Richard is appointed as a king’s agent and instructed to find the missing Abdu El Yezdi, a ghost who has been guiding England’s political and technological progress in an age of traveling steam spheres and cloning. Sir Richard’s stumbling investigation mostly reads as an excuse to run into an encyclopedic list of late-19th-century English luminaries, and the ultimate reveal of the confusing time-twisting plot makes his cluelessness rather unlikely. Intricate worldbuilding is marred by Orientalism as Sir Richard’s firm belief in British superiority colors his knowledge of other lands.

July 1, 2013

Returning from his African exploration, gentleman-explorer Sir Richard Burton receives a commission from King George V to track down a number of prominent scientists who have mysteriously vanished. In addition, a ghostly advisor named Abdu El Yezdi, whose otherworldly pronouncements have aided the ruling cabal that includes the king, Prince Albert, and Benjamin Disraeli, has become strangely silent. Hodder's steampunk series launch (after the trilogy The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack; The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man; and Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon) continues the adventures of Burton and his assistant, the poet Algernon Swinburne. Familiar historical characters receive their own peculiar revisions, while the 19th century itself experiences a makeover, as steam-powered gadgets, including flying rotorchairs, clockwork footmen, and automated, horseless carriages, permeate London's cityscape. VERDICT Set in a universe that parallels the one depicted in the previous trilogy, this outing leaves the door open for exploring a new dimension as Hodder develops more adventures. Steampunk aficionados and series fans should enjoy this. [For more steampunk fiction, see Matt Bett's Odd Men Out, reviewed below.--Ed.]

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