Mission to Mightadore is a pilot trailer for the 7th book in the Jackelian series. It currently consists of two chapters, and also contains the first showing of the much-demanded map of the Jackelian world.
Seline Templar hasn’t experienced an easy life. First, her father died for reasons that have been shockingly concealed from her. Then Seline’s mother, Molly, went missing under suspicious circumstances. So she’s been raised as a ward of King Steam in the Steamman Free State, far away from the potential perils of her home in the Jackelian Kingdom.
Raised in relative solitude among the machine race . . . until an old friend of the family, the steamman scientist Coppertracks, turns up in the capital with news of the most amazing discovery. It will set Seline and her companions off on a dangerous adventure to the mysterious and distant Mightadore.
There’s only one problem with Seline’s destination. Many brave souls have set out to reach the legendary city, but nobody has ever come back alive to describe what they found. . . .
Stephen Hunt is a British writer living in London. His first fantasy novel, For the Crown and the Dragon, was published in 1994, and introduced a young officer, Taliesin, fighting for the Queen of England in a Napoleonic period alternative reality where the wars of Europe were being fought with sorcery and steampunk weapons (airships, clockwork machine guns, and steam-driven trucks called kettle-blacks). The novel won the 1994 WH Smith Award, and the book reviewer Andrew Darlington used Hunt's novel to coin the phrase Flintlock Fantasy to describe the sub-genre of fantasy set in a Regency or Napoleonic-era period.
I realised early on that I'd not read the previous book - and on checking nor the one before that (or more than one). However this volume works as a stand-alone, even if characters from the first several books appear. The combination of a distant future steampunk Earth with time travel to a nearer future (26th century) with still recognisable place names works well - as does the cast of six youngsters who are summarily despatched to the past. The world they find is a mix of low and high tech, following a disastrous encounter with a comet and they need to navigate different cultures to achieve their task - complicated by the fact tat they don't really know why they are there, other than to attempt the rescue of Cassie's mother...
This novel read like fan-fiction written by someone who knew and loved the universe, yet had not mastered basic writing techniques like sentence structures and such. I am accustomed to reading works that become better over time as the writer's career progresses and their skill improves; this novel, on the other hand, felt like it had taken the complete opposite path - and that pain is especially evident when placed side by side with the first installment in the series, "The Court Of The Air".
3 1/2 stars really. I was hooked on Stephen Hunt with his first books in the series and really liked the mixture of steam punk, religion and freshness in his writing. I also thought it had a depth that was quite intriguing. I'm glad that in this book we had many familiar characters make an appearance. My main criticism would be the complexity was missing. It was a breezy adventure.
I enjoyed it but there are many in the series that are better. Having said that there were a number of unforseen plot twists and any book with the steam men and Jared Black in it will always be worth reading.
One of my favorite series. I like the shifting eras of this story as well as any mention of the steammen free state. Looking forward to additional chapters.