Steampunky alt-historical India: British Raj, 1920s vintage. A mysterious energy source called 'Annapurnite' has enabled Britain to maintain a boosted global empire. Jani Chatterjee, precocious teenager and the daughter of an Indian government minister, is returning home from Cambridge University via airship when the Russians attack. She is saved from Russian violation and murder by a weird creature: 'long and thin, its skin deathly white ... its features were almost human' (alien? Frankenstein's monster? Peter Crouch?) From there-on it's a series of diverting adventures in Brown's alt-Raj: dastardly plots are afoot; life-size mechanical elephants are there for the riding; Annapurnite is not all it seems. It's enjoyable stuff, if perhaps a little underinflated, narratively speaking. Sometimes it reads like a jolly novella expanded to novel length; and few of the twists surprised me. Still, Jani is an appealing protagonist, and the pastiche Edwardian-y ripping yarn style is fun. But why take my 21st-century word for it? Why not go to the source: actual journals and newspapers from the alt-1920s. How do they describe the book? General Sir Rochford Faughles said
And? And whom? No matter. Turn instead to the celebrated sapient dog and critic, Sir Collie Wilkins, who identified the key elements of the story as comprising:
All in all: tasty.
The following image has nothing to do with Eric Brown, and is in no way intended as a caricature of him.
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