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Edgar Allan Poe and the Specter Eliminator
Edgar Allan Poe, American writer, poet, critic, and Steampunk Ghostbuster!
Poe has always had a close and personal relationship with death. Once he used his pen to keep his demons at bay, but after the death of his beloved wife Virginia, he is taking a more direct approach. Poe has invented The Specter Eliminator, a portable device capable of extinguishing spirits. With it, he moonlights as a ghost hunter while trying to raise the funds to start his one magazine, The Stylus.
When Poe is tasked with clearing a malevolent spirit from a Georgia mansion, he meets a rival ghost hunter who is very interested in the Specter Eliminator. Poe refuses to join forces and the rival makes it clear he will have Poe’s invention one way or another.
Join Edgar Allan Poe as he uncovers an insidious plot to enslave the dead and revolutionize modern warfare in this steampunk, ghost-hunting adventure that takes you from Boston, Massachusetts, to the Wild West.
Poe has always had a close and personal relationship with death. Once he used his pen to keep his demons at bay, but after the death of his beloved wife Virginia, he is taking a more direct approach. Poe has invented The Specter Eliminator, a portable device capable of extinguishing spirits. With it, he moonlights as a ghost hunter while trying to raise the funds to start his one magazine, The Stylus.
When Poe is tasked with clearing a malevolent spirit from a Georgia mansion, he meets a rival ghost hunter who is very interested in the Specter Eliminator. Poe refuses to join forces and the rival makes it clear he will have Poe’s invention one way or another.
Join Edgar Allan Poe as he uncovers an insidious plot to enslave the dead and revolutionize modern warfare in this steampunk, ghost-hunting adventure that takes you from Boston, Massachusetts, to the Wild West.
288 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 6, 2024
3 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 28, 2024
This book was great fun to read. Gouveia and Peters do a masterful job of weaving history with steampunk and the supernatural to tell a fast-paced riveting tale of death, regret, and the afterlife. I hope we get a sequel!
September 3, 2024
Edgar Allan Poe as a steampunk ghostbuster? Sign me up. A fun, ripping read with many cool elements such as a clockwork raven, lethal hauntings, and the incorporation of history in the background events. Poe is sympathetic and entertaining, and the cast of characters gives him a good variety of personalities to play off of. I enjoyed the recombination of many familiar Poe tropes, with some interesting interpretations and surprises. A good choice for spooky season!
September 11, 2024
This is the story of Edgar Allan Poe not as he was, but as he is in some kind of weird world where ghosts exist, Death is personified, there might be vampires, the Cherokee are very spiritual and some implausible steampunk devices aid not only the disposal of angry spirits, but also in some way that is not well-explained, in producing an army of robots, golems, zombies or something else that's a little vague.
In this story, set in the time of Zachary Taylor, Poe wanders from place to place across the antebellum USA dispelling ghosts and gradually coming to the realisation of how his steam-powered Specter Eliminator works. He also runs into a nemesis, James Laurent, who wants his Eliminator and seems to be a step ahead of Poe all the way. That is, until the end, where he suddenly meets up with Laurent for a conclusion that comes out of nowhere.
You can do stories like this. They're not quite alternate history, nor are they magic realism, or even low fantasy, and their major appeal to me is where you find real historical characters doing different things. The appeal is in combining real biographical data to get a character of the person and then putting the into different situations. This story has Poe, having written Tales of Mystery and Imagination, becoming some kind of super mechanic or tinker, still obsessed with death and mortality, still grieving for Virginia (the lost Lenore) but moving on with a relationship with Ellie Allan, sister of John Allan, whose spirit is preserved in a mechanical raven that Poe has constructed.
James Laurent, Ellie Allan, John Allan? Who are these people? I can't find any reference to any of them in anything I've found about Poe. Laurent, the nemesis, could've been replaced with someone famous from the 19th century—the authors could've picked on Jefferson Davis, for example—but they chose these obscure people and the story loses credibility because of it.
It's a fun meander around a different 1800's, but a meander is essentially what it is. Things happen because they happen, with Poe v Laurent aa a kind of excuse for the meandering. The ending is the setup for a sequel that, in my humble opinion is beyond the ability of the authors.
In this story, set in the time of Zachary Taylor, Poe wanders from place to place across the antebellum USA dispelling ghosts and gradually coming to the realisation of how his steam-powered Specter Eliminator works. He also runs into a nemesis, James Laurent, who wants his Eliminator and seems to be a step ahead of Poe all the way. That is, until the end, where he suddenly meets up with Laurent for a conclusion that comes out of nowhere.
You can do stories like this. They're not quite alternate history, nor are they magic realism, or even low fantasy, and their major appeal to me is where you find real historical characters doing different things. The appeal is in combining real biographical data to get a character of the person and then putting the into different situations. This story has Poe, having written Tales of Mystery and Imagination, becoming some kind of super mechanic or tinker, still obsessed with death and mortality, still grieving for Virginia (the lost Lenore) but moving on with a relationship with Ellie Allan, sister of John Allan, whose spirit is preserved in a mechanical raven that Poe has constructed.
James Laurent, Ellie Allan, John Allan? Who are these people? I can't find any reference to any of them in anything I've found about Poe. Laurent, the nemesis, could've been replaced with someone famous from the 19th century—the authors could've picked on Jefferson Davis, for example—but they chose these obscure people and the story loses credibility because of it.
It's a fun meander around a different 1800's, but a meander is essentially what it is. Things happen because they happen, with Poe v Laurent aa a kind of excuse for the meandering. The ending is the setup for a sequel that, in my humble opinion is beyond the ability of the authors.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews