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Age of Aether
When Captain Benjamin Bantam is tapped to go back in time in order to retrieve a cure for the vicious Shadow plague, he is shocked to arrive in an alternate 1944 where electricity doesn't exist. Instead, a parallel past has mysteriously arisen - complete with parasols, stunningly luxurious Aerotels, hydrologic computing, Helux-powered "cloud growlers" and a space elevator-based moon race with Germany. And of course, there is the lovely Dr. Rachelle Archenstone....
But when Hitler is made Chancellor in this world and the American space program sabotaged, Bantam is the only one who realizes the true depth of the danger posed by the newly-formed Nazi party. Together with Rachelle, he races to save this America while seeking an explanation to the mystery of this alternate past - and with it, a way to return to his own world with the Shadow's cure. But when it comes down to a choice between his lovely Rachelle and a thousand years of Nazi rule, what will he do?
Thrill to a tale of a Yesterday that never was - and yet was!
But when Hitler is made Chancellor in this world and the American space program sabotaged, Bantam is the only one who realizes the true depth of the danger posed by the newly-formed Nazi party. Together with Rachelle, he races to save this America while seeking an explanation to the mystery of this alternate past - and with it, a way to return to his own world with the Shadow's cure. But when it comes down to a choice between his lovely Rachelle and a thousand years of Nazi rule, what will he do?
Thrill to a tale of a Yesterday that never was - and yet was!
- GenresSteampunkScience Fiction
Audible Audio
First published July 22, 2012
5 people are currently reading
131 people want to read
About the author
Mark Jeffrey
27 books154 followersSerial entrepreneur and Harper Collins author | Host HASH RATE Web3 pod | General Partner: Boolean Fund | Founder & CEO, Guardian Circle ‘Friends & Family 9-1-1’ app (Partner: XPRIZE, NEWSWEEK Blockchain Impact Award (2019), FAST COMPANY ‘World Changing Idea’ 2018) | CTO Mahalo (backed by Sequoia, Elon Musk, Jason Calacanis) | Co-Founder & CEO ThisWeekIn podcast network with Kevin Pollak & Jason Calacanis | Founder: ZeroDegrees (2002) business social network (sold to IAC 2004) | Founder: The Palace (Metaverse) 1995-2000, 10M users, backed by SOFTBANK, Intel, Time Warner (sold to Communities.com 1999) | Participated in the Ethereum ICO, Bitcoin class of 2013 | Worked with UBER founder Travis Kalanick on Red Swoosh | First serialized podcast novel (The Pocket and the Pendant) 2005 (2.3M downloads) Harper Collins hardcover 2011| Author: BITCOIN EXPLAINED SIMPLY (2013), THE CASE FOR BITCOIN (2015) | Featured in ‘Trust Machine’ blockchain film (Alex Winter, Rosario Dawson), Apple's PLANET OF THE APPS reality TV show, RISE OF BLOCKCHAIN with Akon.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
August 12, 2012
This was fantastic! It has all of the wonderful things that makes a Mark Jeffrey book a Mark Jeffery book. But again I hate novellas. It just seems like as soon as you are in the midst of the good stuff it's over!!! I hate that!!! But seriously, this is a fun read. It's fast paced but not whiplash inducing. I'm not a steampunk expert. In fact this is really the first book I've read devoted to the subject. I have read other books where steampunk has made brief appearances. I didn't always completely understand all of the tech in this book. Maybe this is because I don't really know steampunk. If there's a sequel I hope Mark will be able to describe the tech in greater detail. I really need those of you who read this review to read this book. It's really good! And those of you who've read Max Quick or Armand Ptolemy and the Golden Aleph should really read this!!!! I truly need there to be a sequel! Do you hear me Mark?!?
Side note: I do plan on using "Pneumanet salon" in everyday conversation and laugh my ass off when people are confused. If you want to know what "Pneumanet salon" means I suggest you buy this book ASAP!!!!
Side note: I do plan on using "Pneumanet salon" in everyday conversation and laugh my ass off when people are confused. If you want to know what "Pneumanet salon" means I suggest you buy this book ASAP!!!!
September 22, 2012
I received "Age of Aether" from the goodreads giveaway. When I read the preview of this book it sounded really good. When I read this it felt like it had a slow beginning, but soon after the first chapter it really began to flow. The story begins with Captin Benjamin Bantam explaning the story to why he was went back to the past. Bantam is sent back into the past, 1944, to retrive a cure for the Shadow plague. When he is in the capsule to jump back in time he ends up going into to parallel universe of 1944, where there is no electricity and no cars, but there are horses and other forms of commuting. When he appears in the "new" 1944 he meets new people where he has to prove that he's actually from the future and is on a mission to retieve the cure for the Shadow plague. There he meets Dr. Rachelle Archenstone and she helps him get the cure. Mark Jeffery does a really good job getting into the characters personality, at times in the book you really feel like you are in there with the characters. I would reccomend this book for people who like quick fun reads. I would read another book by this author.
July 27, 2012
I enjoyed this novella. It is short, and while I'm a fast reader I finished it on two bus rides during rush hour. The central mystery was intriguing, and the characters were decently developed for a novella. There were a few logic leaps that needed to be made, but they were not too extreme. I found the ending a bit lacking though. It wrapped up very quickly and I wanted a bit more resolution or explanation. I think another 10 pages would have been quite worth it. Still, well worth the few dollars for an enjoyable read.
September 16, 2012
Received as a win from goodreads. This is one awesome read. Steampunk at it's best. Nozzlers, volstrang waves, Blue Bottles, Aerotels...i could hear the calliope playing. The story is great, dont know if it is just me but I found a bit of a 9/11 reference when the Germans brought the huge building down. The romanance is so well built to the tragic end and the well done conclusion.
Marvelous writing I felt I was right there. made me want to grow and curl a mustashe.
Marvelous writing I felt I was right there. made me want to grow and curl a mustashe.
September 6, 2012
This was one of the few books that i would read over and over again non-stop. The only thing that could have made it better was if he had mentioned what the letter had said. I nearly died of curiosity! Anyway, you're one of the best authors whose books i have been fortunate enough to read.
September 18, 2012
First Reads - Age of Aether Review
I like the idea of steampunk, like the allure and the strangeness, the twisting of the familiar into something more fantastic and special. And in that way, I like the glimpses of steampunk that I see in Age of Aether, at least as far as the actual descriptions go, the imaginings of different steam technologies and the like. The book is imaginative in its use of an alternate past where steam has replaced electricity. At the same time, though, this imagination does not extend to the characters, or to the plot, and I find that I was more frustrated than entertained while reading this book. Not that there are not glimpses of something better, but that it got lost in territory that too many others have traveled, so that its path was obscured and confusing in the mess.
It was the story that threw me off of this novel, because while the look was right, the general feel of the steampunk was right, the actual plot here was just too contrived, too expected. A man from the present goes back in time but finds that instead of the past there is this Age of Aether, where electricity is a myth, despite it being around only fifty years before the "past" section of the story takes place. It was just too much to believe that people could understand enough to create space elevators and design flying hotels but be unable to figure out what happened to their own world as the result of a catastrophe that makes no sense.
It just made no sense, in the end, because positing steampunk as real is troubling because it doesn't really work, and in work fictional worlds it comes down to basically magic. Only here it's supposed to be scientific, but it makes no sense. These are people who can't figure out that electricity existed...and it's 1944 in the story. According to this electricity ceased to be in the late 1800s. That isn't enough time for it to be a myth. There was science in the 1800s. People understood how things worked. It wasn't all witchcraft then. So I just don't buy any of it, don't buy that somehow there are new elements and possibilities (because no electricity means strange new elements?). If the story needs magic, then just admit what it is, but don't put me in a place where I'm supposed to believe that these things happened in an otherwise "real" world.
And perhaps I got caught up in that because the characterization throughout the story is lacking. The main character, an army specialist (in what, I don't know), is full of action but no thought. There are a few italicized thoughts, but no feeling that I am experiencing the setting from his perspective. It's all just description, with no subtlety or depth. When the story says he's in love, that's exactly and only what's going on. When someone is evil because, then don't question. No one surprises, no one changes. Everyone is the same throughout. It doesn't help that the book climaxes towards the middle, with the main villain dying and then spends the rest of the book summarizing things until the end.
And Hitler. What is people and Hitler? And Nazis? It's like the writer didn't want to bother to make a real antagonist so he threw a dart at a board and decided on Nazis. Because no one questions their evilness. Hitler is worse than the devil. Of course. He transcends realities and times and...it's just tired, done, over. Where did the imagination go? So no, I can't really recommend this. If you collected all the descriptions of the scenery, you'd at least have something, but with everything else around it, pulling it down, this just can't escape its own gravity. And for that, I give it a two out of five.
I like the idea of steampunk, like the allure and the strangeness, the twisting of the familiar into something more fantastic and special. And in that way, I like the glimpses of steampunk that I see in Age of Aether, at least as far as the actual descriptions go, the imaginings of different steam technologies and the like. The book is imaginative in its use of an alternate past where steam has replaced electricity. At the same time, though, this imagination does not extend to the characters, or to the plot, and I find that I was more frustrated than entertained while reading this book. Not that there are not glimpses of something better, but that it got lost in territory that too many others have traveled, so that its path was obscured and confusing in the mess.
It was the story that threw me off of this novel, because while the look was right, the general feel of the steampunk was right, the actual plot here was just too contrived, too expected. A man from the present goes back in time but finds that instead of the past there is this Age of Aether, where electricity is a myth, despite it being around only fifty years before the "past" section of the story takes place. It was just too much to believe that people could understand enough to create space elevators and design flying hotels but be unable to figure out what happened to their own world as the result of a catastrophe that makes no sense.
It just made no sense, in the end, because positing steampunk as real is troubling because it doesn't really work, and in work fictional worlds it comes down to basically magic. Only here it's supposed to be scientific, but it makes no sense. These are people who can't figure out that electricity existed...and it's 1944 in the story. According to this electricity ceased to be in the late 1800s. That isn't enough time for it to be a myth. There was science in the 1800s. People understood how things worked. It wasn't all witchcraft then. So I just don't buy any of it, don't buy that somehow there are new elements and possibilities (because no electricity means strange new elements?). If the story needs magic, then just admit what it is, but don't put me in a place where I'm supposed to believe that these things happened in an otherwise "real" world.
And perhaps I got caught up in that because the characterization throughout the story is lacking. The main character, an army specialist (in what, I don't know), is full of action but no thought. There are a few italicized thoughts, but no feeling that I am experiencing the setting from his perspective. It's all just description, with no subtlety or depth. When the story says he's in love, that's exactly and only what's going on. When someone is evil because, then don't question. No one surprises, no one changes. Everyone is the same throughout. It doesn't help that the book climaxes towards the middle, with the main villain dying and then spends the rest of the book summarizing things until the end.
And Hitler. What is people and Hitler? And Nazis? It's like the writer didn't want to bother to make a real antagonist so he threw a dart at a board and decided on Nazis. Because no one questions their evilness. Hitler is worse than the devil. Of course. He transcends realities and times and...it's just tired, done, over. Where did the imagination go? So no, I can't really recommend this. If you collected all the descriptions of the scenery, you'd at least have something, but with everything else around it, pulling it down, this just can't escape its own gravity. And for that, I give it a two out of five.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 5, 2013
For the third time today I write the simple words that I received this book as a free giveaway from Goodreads, part of the First Reads program. Despite that I shall endeavor to write yet another candid review.
The Age of Aether is brief and entertaining. It is often underestimated just how often these two attributes travel together. One can plow through this novella in a couple of hours and remain reasonably amused throughout the trip.
Time travel stories are notoriously difficult and this one does a good job of respecting causality without leaving the reader scratching his or her head. That said it's not overly complex by any means and goes rather directly to its destination.
The only negatives I would ascribe to it are twofold. Firstly, the font size is far too large. So much so that it becomes a distraction. I understand that the printer wished to bulk up the book to make it seem longer than it is but this has been carried to extremes and it strikes the reader almost as a children's book. Secondly, and one of my perennial pet peeves, the book is prone to typographical errors. These are distracting but easily rectified. I have no doubt that this review will contain an error or two just to maintain the balance of irony in the universe but then this isn't a published work of fiction either.
To summarize, a good story well executed but it could benefit from a few slight adjustments. Perhaps the author should consider a longer format work for their next publication. I for one would certainly welcome it.
The Age of Aether is brief and entertaining. It is often underestimated just how often these two attributes travel together. One can plow through this novella in a couple of hours and remain reasonably amused throughout the trip.
Time travel stories are notoriously difficult and this one does a good job of respecting causality without leaving the reader scratching his or her head. That said it's not overly complex by any means and goes rather directly to its destination.
The only negatives I would ascribe to it are twofold. Firstly, the font size is far too large. So much so that it becomes a distraction. I understand that the printer wished to bulk up the book to make it seem longer than it is but this has been carried to extremes and it strikes the reader almost as a children's book. Secondly, and one of my perennial pet peeves, the book is prone to typographical errors. These are distracting but easily rectified. I have no doubt that this review will contain an error or two just to maintain the balance of irony in the universe but then this isn't a published work of fiction either.
To summarize, a good story well executed but it could benefit from a few slight adjustments. Perhaps the author should consider a longer format work for their next publication. I for one would certainly welcome it.
July 9, 2012
Age of Aether -- A Steampunk Adventure-Romance Novella.
When Capt. Ben Bantam is tapped to go back in time in order to retrieve a cure for the vicious Shadow plague, he is shocked to arrive in an alternate 1944 where electricity doesn't exist. Instead, a parallel past has mysteriously arisen -- complete with parasols, stunningly luxurious Aerotels, hydrologic computing, Helux-powered 'cloud growlers' and a space elevator-based moon race with Germany. And of course, there is the lovely Dr. Rachelle Archenstone ...
But when Hitler is made Chancellor in this world and the American space program sabotaged, Bantam is the only one who realizes the true depth of the danger posed by the newly formed Nazi party. Together with Rachelle, he races to save this America while seeking an explanation to the mystery of this alternate past -- and with it, a way to return to his own world with the Shadow's cure. But when it comes down to a choice between his lovely Rachelle and a thousand years of Nazi rule, what will he do?
Thrill to a tale of a Yesterday that never was ... And yet was!
When Capt. Ben Bantam is tapped to go back in time in order to retrieve a cure for the vicious Shadow plague, he is shocked to arrive in an alternate 1944 where electricity doesn't exist. Instead, a parallel past has mysteriously arisen -- complete with parasols, stunningly luxurious Aerotels, hydrologic computing, Helux-powered 'cloud growlers' and a space elevator-based moon race with Germany. And of course, there is the lovely Dr. Rachelle Archenstone ...
But when Hitler is made Chancellor in this world and the American space program sabotaged, Bantam is the only one who realizes the true depth of the danger posed by the newly formed Nazi party. Together with Rachelle, he races to save this America while seeking an explanation to the mystery of this alternate past -- and with it, a way to return to his own world with the Shadow's cure. But when it comes down to a choice between his lovely Rachelle and a thousand years of Nazi rule, what will he do?
Thrill to a tale of a Yesterday that never was ... And yet was!
April 14, 2015
I enjoyed it but it didn't have much to say for character development. Both plot and character could have been more gone into. Ben and Rachelle were pretty Gary Stew/Mary Sue characters as well. I did enjoy it, very quick read and interesting world he came up with. Also I think this would benefit from a lesbian fan fiction, as in Ben is a woman named Bianca or something. Let me know if someone wants to write that for me.
October 7, 2012
A wonder full story. I like the way the author created a whole new world, a “what if world”, that is. With it's own culture and new words that give it a unique flavour. The book felt more of a chronicle then a stand alone.
I also like how the other explain things. So we didn't have to ask in the end anything except wonder why it was just one book.
I also like how the other explain things. So we didn't have to ask in the end anything except wonder why it was just one book.
July 22, 2016
A vividly spun tale that ignites the imagination. Alternate History, Steam Punk, and Time Travel. Loved it, Mark's best work yet! :)
August 19, 2022
Excellent book!!!
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews