The Iron Jackal

January 20, 2014
With action, adventure, and blistering stupidity, the crew of the airship Ketty Jay lives down to its poor reputation, as Wooding takes a third careening trip (after The Black Lung Captain) through his chaotic steampunk world. Capt. Darian Frey would be a hero to his country if only he had a scrap of foresight or impulse control. Instead, he has a train heist to run for fellow captain Trinica Dracken, who wants to acquire a valuable relic. Frey finds out the hard way that pinched relics have a way of pinching back. Returning the relic to its rightful place is Frey’s only hope, because the cyborg Iron Jackal has been sent to retrieve it, possibly at the cost of Frey’s life. While there are moments of terror and scenes of bloody warfare, Wooding rarely lets momentum take its course. Characters spring in and out of focus, and the action is frequently interrupted by banter or slapstick comedy, even as bullets whiz overhead. The mishmash is sometimes thrilling, sometimes funny, frequently frustrating, and eventually surprisingly satisfying.

Starred review from February 15, 2014

Capt. Darian Frey and the rest of the crew of the airship Ketty Jay are used to getting out of dangerous situations, but stealing an ancient relic from a Samarlan museum inadvertently triggers a demonic curse. Frey needs to return the relic to the place it was originally found before nightfall in 12 days, or a demon will be released to kill him in a particularly horrifying fashion. VERDICT Fans of the TV show Firefly will love the rollicking steampunk adventures of the Ketty Jay's motley crew. The action races along, with adventures ranging from tense and gripping to hilarious and absurd--and sometimes both. The crew members are wildly different, but Wooding allows all of them moments to shine and become real to the reader. Although this is the third volume of the series (following 2011's The Black Lung Captain), new readers will have no trouble falling in love with the sailors of the Ketty Jay.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2014
Captain Darien Frey and the crew of the airship Ketty Jay are hired to pull off a fairly simple heist: steal a valuable ancient relic from a train. But, after they have the relic (a sword that could be thousands of years old), things take a sudden turn for the worse. Is it possible that Trinica Dracken, Frey's lover-then-mortal-enemy-now-ally, withheld some important details when she convinced Frey to take the job? The book is the third in this steampunk series, and it's a lot of fun, fast-moving, with plenty of action set pieces and a cast of lively, slightly larger than life characters. A fourth book in the series is scheduled to appear in the summer of 2014, and, if you're a fan of Wooding's brand of steampunk, that can't come soon enough.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)