Adler

Starred review from February 1, 2021

In 1902, Jane Eyre returns from serving as an ambulance driver in the Boer War to discover electric lights lining the streets of London and airships drifting across the skies. Searching for lodgings, she visits freethinking inventor Lady Havisham, who introduces her to Irene Adler, an American opera star and adventurer with amazing deductive powers. After discovering Adler's quest to keep a trove of documents necessary for building a devastating weapon of mass destruction from falling into the wrong hands, Eyre volunteers to assist her. Soon, the pair are locked in battle with a coalition of the Victorian era's most loathsome villains--including vampiric assassin Carmilla, criminal mastermind Professor Moriarity, Colonel Moran, Raffles, and a knife-wielding maniac going by Jack, among others--headed by Ayesha, She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, a ferocious warrior queen hell-bent on destroying the British Empire as revenge for colonizing her homeland. VERDICT Tidhar (By Force Alone) propels an ensemble of historical figures and literary characters through a knotty and thrilling plot packed with intrigue and visceral action, illustrated with a keen eye for historical detail by McCaffrey (Anno Dracula-1895: Seven Days in Mayhem).

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