To understand the problem, let’s briefly survey the situation. Out of desperation, she makes a monetary deal hoping to buy his intellectual and financial freedom only to find herself trapped “somewhere”. So when Arthur gets sidetracked by an increasingly obsessional interest with earning enough to pay off his debts, he effectively cuts off Josephine. As is required by the social etiquette of the day, this is the Victorian version of Chaucerian courtly love with the couple falling in love with the idea of each other but not doing a great deal about it other than walk out together whenever they have the chance. The best way to understand the problem is to see our two lovers. Unfortunately, we then get caught up in a less dynamic section of plot which, by comparison, falls rather flat. But Gilman has invested such wit into the language, his sheer playfulness carries us through the great storm, through the first meeting of our romantically entangled couple, and into the meat of the initial action. If this had been done straight, it would quickly have grown boring.

We’re recreating the world of an alternate history late Victorian London so the prose style borrows many of the stylistic touches of the period and updates them for modern consumption. Some of the language is at a level of delight not even dreamed of by any other book I’ve read in the last twelve months. Gilman gives some impression that the haphazardness of his storylines may, in the end, shaken together, seem prelusory of a not-yet revealed overstory.The Revolutions by Felix Gilman is slightly frustrating. A singleton, The Revolutions ( 2014), is set initially in a Steampunk version of Victorian London, but moves into Planetary Romance territory. A sense that the West is under a process of creation and constant metamorphosis, perhaps under the control of a Godgame figure, is not exactly uncountenanced. In The Rise of Ransom City ( 2012), the eponymous inventor Harry Ransom (see Invention), whose story is 'edited' long after the fact by an opportunistic author of some genius, transforms the world through an enigmatic 'process'. Gilman's second series, the Half-Made World sequence beginning with The Half-Made World ( 2010), more comprehensively Steampunk than its predecessor, takes place in what may be described as an Alternate World version of something like America, as unpacked according to the topoi and geography of the Western. Much of the tale is set in a City under invasion from gnomic flying Monsters, opposed by Arjun, a recent arrival in a world whose clockwork intricacies evoke the early work of China Miéville. (1974- ) UK lawyer and author, in US for some time, most of his work being fantasy, including his first series, the Arjun sequence beginning with Thunderer ( 2007).

The half made world by felix gilman