The Return of the Discontinued Man

May 5, 2014
Hodder’s fifth Burton and Swinburne adventure (after The Secret of Abdu El-Yezdi) careens through a series of intentionally baffling false starts before soaring into a time-travelling expedition of increasingly hellish dystopias. British anthropologist and explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton and endearingly debauched poet Algernon Swinburne explore a wittily fashioned alternate Victorian era. Burton is alarmed when his laudanum-like tincture sends him careening through numerous manifestations of a single recurrent moment, and soon he realizes that Edward Oxford, the tragically mad intellectual, is not dead. The companions embark on a journey aboard a hovercraft with a prickly personality towards the moment in the future when Oxford first realized he could alter history. Readers persistent enough to make their way through the bewildering opening will be riveted by Hodder’s ingenious reinventing of both history and recent present, while quailing at what that reimagining does to the future.

June 15, 2014
Fifth in Hodder's steampunk series (The Secret of Abdu El Yezdi, 2013, etc.) starring Victorian explorer/translator Sir Richard Burton and his improbable sidekick, the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne.Series regulars will acknowledge that the books don't stand alone. So, recall that everything began with the assassination of Queen Victoria by Edward Oxford, an insane time traveler from the 23rd century. This resulted in an alternate history in which scientist Charles Babbage and engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel spurred an industrial revolution that led to a devastating world war in the future of every timeline. Babbage, Brunel (now resident in a bizarre robot body), Burton and Swinburne have been searching desperately for a way to avert the war. This time, at precisely 9 p.m. on Feb. 15, 1860, as Babbage performs a critical experiment on the time traveler's suit recovered in a previous episode, red snow falls over London as Burton and Swinburne make their way to a meeting of the Cannibal Club, and Spring Heeled Jack appears out of thin air, shrieking insanely and attacking Burton. Soon, dozens more Jacks, all dangerously demented, appear in locations where Burton is likely to be found. Burton, meanwhile, resorts to Saltzman's tincture, a decoction that brings him bewildering visions of parallel realities and futures yet to be-including one where Burton finds himself in the 23rd century, occupying the brain and body of the decidedly sane genius known as Edward Oxford! Alert readers will note that Hodder's time-travel rationale buckles under the pressure of the plot's requirements, but it doesn't matter: There's more than enough adventure, intrigue, invention, fun and engagement to satisfy everybody-at least, those with some idea of what to expect.Series addict? Go right ahead. You know you want to.

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May 15, 2014
In this fifth installment of his popular Burton and Swinburne steampunk alternate-history series, Hodder brings back the titular antihero of his award-winning novel The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack (2010). This time the mythical leaping phantom plays an entirely different role for notorious explorer Richard Burton and his sidekick, the famous poet Algernon Swinburne, acting here as a messenger with a warning about a catastrophic rift in time. After red snow begins falling from the sky and Burton experiences a series of hallucinations involving parallel universes, the pair traces these disruptions to an experiment conducted by brilliant inventor Charles Babbage. Before they know it, Burton and Swinburne find themselves jumping into the future in 54-year increments, with their ultimate destination a radically transformed England in 2202. As in the previous novels, Hodder puts his knack for tall-tale spinning on full display, with such Victorian England celebrities as Herbert Spencer and H. G. Wells rubbing elbows with each other in one imaginative and enthralling scenario after another. Hodder's growing legion of fans won't be disappointed.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)