Colin Greenland's Harmsway.
Softback. £8.99. Harper Collins

Our first Colin Greenland novel, and if the rest of his work is of the same level, the last. It's a steampunk novel featuring the usual Britannia rules the stars scenario first pioneered by the RPG game Space 1889.

It's a lot of old balls really: Dickens meets Space 1889, with spaceport urchin Sophie leaving her orbital city in search of long-lost mother, all written in an annoying mock-Victorian style.

She goes to earth, has some tea in a sailing ship painted with black anti-gravity paint, becomes a home help in London, irons some shirts, goes to mars and becomes a catholic novice, has some more tea, then - in the last two chapters - accompanies an assassin in search of her father, pops turning out to be a real bastard who tries to kill them both.

We still can't understand why, and worse, by the end of the book, we didn't even care! Boring, flat, fussy, and full of lost opportunities; for some class steampunk, read Stephen Baxter's anti-ice instead (review this issue - Ed).

We understand Greenland actually won an Arthur C. Clarke award. Why?


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