Eleven stories to bring steampunk adventure into your life
fill this colourful volume. My favourites were:
FIVE TO ONE by Angela Sparrow. Dee and Jonathan in Boston,
get ready to head for San Francisco in an inventors' race.
They have to build a man-powered machine to take them three
thousand miles. Dee is the inventor and he designs a tall
bicycle with a gearing ratio of five to one between pedal
and large wheels, and Jonathan, finally able to express his
love for this young Irishman, is ready to leave his cloth
mill job for good, win or no win.
THE CLOCKWORK NIGHTINGALE'S SONG by Amy Rae Durrenson is
set in smoky London's Vauxhall Gardens where clockwork
birds adorn the trees and some of the supposedly fine
gentlemen have a penchant for young mechanics. Lord
Marchmont, who designs brass birds and revolving hedgerows
for mazes, as well as airships, comes to investigate why
one of his nightingales won't sing on schedule. Shem
Holloway, the senior mechanic, has his hands full looking
after apprentices, but finds the inventor quite as
fascinating as his inventions.
ACE OF HEARTS by Mary Pletsch is action all the way in a
tale of derring do as a young Albion pilot takes on not
only airships with his Sopwith Pegasus but the Bosche army
as he endeavours to rescue a fighter captain, in an
adventure that would make flying ace Biggles proud.
In SCREWS by RD Hero, we see a young gentleman having to
work in a factory which turns out screws for all these
metal gimmicks. Dawn to dusk, six and a half days a week,
with a curfew; well somebody has to make the engineering
parts!
UNTOUCHABLE by Layla M Weir sets Ness and Capone at odds in
a Chicago overflown by dirigibles toting cargo and
contraband, when rural grain elevators are just as good for
mooring posts.
If you like automata, there are stories about those, war
stories and pirate tales, robotic housekeepers, mercury
chambers, gentlemen thieves, laudanum addicts; all in
STEAMED UP, a collection of exciting male romance for adult
steampunk readers.
Inventors, pilots, tinkers, and soldiers; magical metals to
replace an aging heart or a ruined limb; steam-powered
fantasy worlds of clockwork nightingales, automatons,
dirigibles, and men. The stories in this anthology visit
diverse times in the history of modern man, and the men who
populate these tales face war and cruelty, masters and
autocrats, illness and poverty and greed. Yet the heat of
romance outmatches even the steam engines, and time and
again, the gears of love rule the day.
Stories included are:
The Clockwork Nightingale's Song by Amy Rae Durreson
Caress by Eli Easton
Swiftsilver by Bell Ellis
The Clockwork Heart by Kim Fielding
The Galatea's Captain by Anka Grace
Screws by R.D. Hero
The Golden Goose by Mark Lesney
Spindle and Bell by Augusta Li
Ace of Hearts by Mary Pletsch
Five to One by Angelia Sparrow
Untouchable by Layla M. Wier