High Vaultage

"High Vaultage is steampunk fiction at its best. It’s alternative history on a massive scale. And, having read a lot of this kind of thing, it was not like any other book I’ve read. It stands alone as a great sc-fi, steampunk book: it’s funny, it deals with this bizarre, massive metropolis— Everything is recognisable but not recognisable. It really works. It’s a bit like China Mieville’s Perdido Street Station : it works on the same theory, that you can take something real, twist it into a pretzel kind of shape, leave it recognisable. And pair it with a phenomenal story. That’s what you have here. I really, really loved it. Like Glorious Exploits , you can feel the electricity. The description is so strong that you have all those senses of smell and taste…. I didn’t want it to end, and when it did I wanted to go right back into that world. I think with a great science fiction or steampunk book, you can feel a bit cheated at the end, because you want to go back there but it’s not real. And it’s funny. I wasn’t expecting that. It deserves its place on the shortlist."