Great read. Great story. (Amazon review)
The Commission tightens its grip on The Smoke. The Silencios return in full force. The Smoke’s citizens are brutalized. Treacherous Mikolai Stahl’s Long Sighters surveil them from above. Murdo McBowell’s Yellers feed them a diet of fear and disinformation. The city-state simmers with rage and rebellion. The poor and dispossessed are press-ganged into semi-slave labour by the sinister state outsourcing company SerfCo. Meanwhile, inventor of electricidad Dr Efrain and his assistant Siddeley are on the run, blamed for the Battersby Power Station explosion and the ensuing ‘electricidad riots.’
When they’re betrayed by Chavalier leader Dalton Trager Rhineheart, Efrain and Siddeley are taken prisoner to face a show trial and a certain death sentence. Cerval and the Incorruptibles mount a daring rescue bid, supported by a strange alliance of the Goth-like Matetelkoyas, Paulina Ellamova and her all-woman pit pony cavalry, and Los Gatos Salvajes – the guerrillas led by heiress-turned-revolutionary Keira Specklestone Pfarrer.
Humiliated, the Commission plans a bloody revenge, sending the bomb-laden Great Western airship to pound the Frankenstein estate back into the stone age but there’s a final explosive surprise to come….