'Hounds Of Autumn' was a lottery book for me. I needed a book with 'Autumn' in the title as part of a reading challenge. I'd never read Heather Blackwood before and I haven't really read much steampunk. It turned out to be a (small) lottery win for me and I'll certainly be reading more of Heather Blackwood's books.

For the first two-thirds of the book, I had 'Hounds Of Autumn' tagged as an engaging cosy mystery set in a steampunk version of Victorian England. There were airships and cunningly crafted, battery-powered, semiautonomous mechanicals, mysterious goings-on on the Moor and married women being very much in the power of their husbands. Our heroine was an inventor of mechanicals and has a much older, moderately wealthy, botanist husband who indulges her unwomanly fascination with automata.

The only things that marred my enjoyment were small slips that showed me that Heather Blackwood isn't from England. The first was early in the book when, on finding a dead body in a bog in the Moor, she wrote that it was a miracle that the body had been found at all,,,

´,,,in the thousands of miles of bogs and marshes’

By English standards, that’s an impossibly large number.

Dartmoor National Park is 368 square miles. Yellowstone National Park is almost ten times that size at 3,468 square miles. If you’re used to US National Parks, Dartmoor must seem like something you’d miss if you blinked, but then, the whole of England is 50,337 square miles, so about the size of Alabama.

Then there were problems with speech. An Englishwoman would no more describe tea as 'hot tea' than a Canadian would describe hockey as 'ice hockey'. Nor would an Englishman, on receipt of a loan, promises to 'repay every cent.' rather than repaying every penny. These were small things but they kept bouncing me out of the story.

Then, suddenly, in the last third of the book, 'Hounds Of Autumn' found its legs and became a more serious and more powerful book. It wasn't cosy any more. It was violent and deadly, driven by jealousy, hatred, shame and long-kept secrets. It became centred around very powerful, very decisive women and the conflicts between them.

I found myself turning the pages, keen to know what happened next, and being pleasantly surprised at the punch that the plot and the characters delivered.

As far as I can see, 'Hounds Of Autumn' is a standalone novel, so I can't follow our heroine's adventures further, but I have bought 'The Clockwork Cathedral' (isn't that an attention-getting title?) which is the first book in 'The Time Corps Chronicles' so that I can read more of Heather Blackwood's books.

I've set aside my reading challenges at the moment to focus on some of the new books I've bought and to play Snakes and Ladders. Lockdown gives me time to read but also keeps distracting me from reading and has taken away my appetite for anything to serious.

The book I'm having the most fun with at the moment is Grady Hendrix's "The Southern Book Club's Guide To Slaying Vampires".

I picked this up because of Char's review and I'm glad I did,

I hadn't realised how "safe" vampire books had started to feel. We all know the rules and the participants all quickly work out the steps to their dance.

Hendrix blows all that away, not by making up new stuff about vampires but by focusing on the normal life of a bunch of Southern housewives in the mid-1980s. They have formed a book club that mostly reads true crime and it has become a way for them to support each other in all the crap life throws at them.

Now add a travelling man into the mix. A tall dark stranger with winning ways and an eye-condition that makes daylight panful and see what happens.

The outcome so far is not at all cosy. It's surprisingly disturbing because it's so easy to see this happening. 

"Hounds of Autumn" is a lottery book - I'm reading it because square 70 on Snakes and Ladders needed a book with Autumn on the cover.

It's mostly fun. There's a nice cosy mystery and some interesting technology and some flashes or anger at the Victorian ways of treating women as the property of their husbands,

I keep getting distracted by avoidable Americanisms in English characters.

What Englishman, on receipt of a loan, promises to "repay every cent"? Are Pounds, Shillings and Pence so hard to grasp?

"The Holiday" is actually a quite well-written suspense piece about a woman who believes one of the three life-long friends she is on holiday with is having an affair with her husband. She's determined to find out who.

When I read a chapter I become engaged with the story (although the characters are quite hard to like) but when I put the book down, I don't have a strong urge to go back to it

This is turning into a pleasant cozy mystery with mechanical automata and Victorian value rolled in. 

There's still the odd stumble that gets being English wrong. An Englishwoman would no more describe tea as 'hot tea'' than a Canadian would describe hockey as 'ice hockey'.

You would never serve Battenburg at a funeral. You would serve sherry for the women and whiskey for the men. 

But there's enough here to serve as a good distraction from the woes of the world and that will do for today.

I’m reading a steampunk novel, set in Dartmoor, for Snakes and Ladders. I chose it because it has the word Autumn in the title.

It promises to be fun « airships and mechanicals and mysterious goings on on the Moor and married women being very much in the power of their husbands. Our heroine is an inventor of mechanicals and has a botanist husband who indulges her umwomanly fascination with automata.

So, I was cruising along through the normal steampunk world»building when a body is found in a bog on the Moor and I was reminded of how hard it is to imagine England when you’re not from here, The author wrote that it was a miracle that the body had been found at all,,,

´,,,in the thousands of miles of bogs and marshes’

 

By English standards, that’s an impossibly large number.

Dartmoor National Park is 368 square miles. Yellowstone National Park is almost ten times that size at 3,468 square miles. If you’re used to US National Parks, Dartmoor must seem like something you’d miss if you blinked, but then, the whole of England is 50,337 square mile, so about the size of Alabama.

Even so, if you’re going to set a book in Dartmoor, even a steampunk alternative history Dartmoor, it wouldn’t hurt to look up its size.

Blackwood is the first book in the Perth Shifters series by Pia Foxhall. We jump straight into the action with Braden in trouble, in the middle of nowhere. He is rescued by Coll, who realises just what Braden has been through, and he tries his best to help him in the circumstances. Of course, it couldn't be that easy, so Braden's past is thrown into the mix, plus long distances.

What you get is an enthralling read that will keep you turning the pages. The story is fully fleshed out, with a multitude of other characters that I am hoping I hear from! There were no editing or grammatical errors that disrupted my reading, and I thoroughly enjoyed every word.

This is the first in the series, so don't expect everything to be handed to you on a plate. Instead, look forward to the next installment, so you can get the full enjoyment. Absolutely recommended by me.

* A copy of this book was provided to me with no requirements for a review. I voluntarily read this book, and the comments here are my honest opinion. *

Merissa
Archaeolibrarian - I Dig Good Books!