I love Greg Alldredge’s Helena Brandywine novels so it’s no surprise that I was delighted to get my hands on Saint Augustine: A Helena Brandywine Adventure. This book is, quite simply, extremely imaginative and superbly written. They’re my favorite steampunk novels and that’s a genre I totally love. It had just what I wanted including a great plot. I frankly adore Helena and love watching her take on all comers. The rest of the cast of characters is pretty amazing as well. I also love the setting in alternative North America at the turning of the 19th to 20th Century. But for the fact that I’m literally dictating this review to my husband from my hospital bed I could go on and on with praises - the book definitely deserves it. Since I can’t do that I will simply note that the book is most definitely one to read, it is easy to highly recommend. I’m definitely looking forward to the next Helena Brandywine Adventure.
Even though I’m pretty sure that I came in the middle of Helena’s adventures, I appreciated that I was able to situate myself as a reader without prior context. Alldredge does a great job with continuity and has little need for over-summation of the previous books, which I appreciate.
Through the journey, Helena picked up many interesting characters including Rosa and Krushna. I look forward to reading more of Helena’s adventures and am anxious to see if she’s ever able to put enough clues together to find her parents.
“St. Augustine” was well-written with a few errors here and there that could use a bit of cleaning up. Good read!