The Nightshade Cabal
Victorian Gaslamp with a Technomancer Twist
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $2.99
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files meets Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan in this original Gaslamp fantasy-mystery debut, The Nightshade Cabal, a Crime Writers of Canada Award of Excellence Finalist.
"When technomancer Isaac Barrow is set in search of a young spellcaster, he unknowingly entwines himself into the machinations of a diabolical plot. Chris Patrick Carolan creates a world where the marriage of technology and magic yields fantastic machines, but also horrid aberrations to nature."
- Verified Reviewer
All Isaac Barrow wants is to be left alone to pursue his supernatural research and tinker with his inventions. But when you're the only technomancer openly practicing the craft in 1880s Halifax, trouble has a way of finding you.
When a routine mechanical service call reveals the grisly handiwork of the Nightshade Cabal—an underground cult of necromancers—Barrow finds himself in a race against time to put a stop to the Cabal's depredations before they can kill anyone else and turn them into... office machinery?
Then there's the mystery of Emily Skye, a missing teenager with strange abilities of her own. Believing her disappearance to be connected to the Nightshade Cabal, Barrow agrees to help track down the missing girl. But even if he can find her, will Miss Skye aid him in his struggle against the Cabal? Or might she turn out to be the deadliest threat of all?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The clever ways in which biology, technology, and the occult interface in Carolan's steampunk mystery debut hint at a promising new universe, but the actual story leaves too much potential unfulfilled. In 1881 Nova Scotia, researcher and technomancer Isaac Barrow searches for the source of strange autotype cartridges, parts of an arcane but very intelligent machine used to make copies, that appear to have been made with human brain matter rather than typical porcine brain. Simultaneously, he is hired to look for Emily Skye, whose sister fears the girl may have fallen in with a shadowy guild of necromancers, the Nightshade Cabal. The cases inevitably collide, leading Barrow to meet Emily, who serves as an excellent foil to his magico-mechanical exposition. But other pieces of the world's magic, like the living tattoos of the Cabal's stereotyped Chinese muscle, get little explanation. Most glaringly, the politics and practices of the Cabal never really come into play, and the social implications of minority magical ability beg for a more thorough exploration. Readers will enjoy the flavor of Carolan's alternate history, but will find it frustratingly light on connective tissue.
