The Affinity Bridge

[sawyl]

In an attempt to get back in to the habit of blogging about books, here are a few thoughts on George Mann's steampunk mystery, The Affinity Bridge, which I read on my rather delayed journey back to the Midlands at the tail end of last year.

The novel, set in an alternate version of London in 1901, imagines a world driven by sophisticated coal and clockwork technology. A world where steam-powered hansom cabs are becoming a regular fixture on the roads and automaton-piloted zeppelins are starting to fill the skies. A world where the upper classes live well, waited on and entertained by clockpunk robots; while the members of the lower orders who aren't being killed by a mysterious glowing policeman are instead at risk of catching a hideous plague running rife in the East End, that induces a form of living death.

Sir Maurice Newbury, ostensibly of the British Museum, is in fact one of Queen Victoria's top Crown Investigators and an expert on all things occult. With the aid of his assistant, Miss Veronica Hobbes, and large quantities of earl grey, he finds himself investigating the crimes the police are unable to deal with. So, when the zeppelin The Lady Armitage crashes, Newbury to finds himself pulled away from his investigation of the glowing policeman and sent off in pursuit of a louche airship magnate and his Gallic inventor partner.

Despite being an enjoyable novel, The Affinity Bridge is not exactly problem free. Firstly, the central mystery plot doesn't really sustain itself for long enough. The eventual solution becomes clear fairly early on in the book, which makes it hard to cheer for the detectives when the finally work out all the answers. Perhaps this is unfair. The reader is given a selective view of events by the author, so that certain key plot points are emphasised; whereas the characters, living through the events of the novel, lack this filtered viewpoint.

Secondly, although the characters do have a life beyond the mystery, it's hard to really feel for them. Veronica is troubled by her parents' decision to commit her sister to an asylum, but the pain of this doesn't really seem to touch on the rest of her life. While Newbury, in the best traditions of detective of detective fiction, has a drug problem, it doesn't seem to affect him much beyond feeling rather embarrassed when he accidentally overdoses on laudanum and has to be rescued by Veronica.

Thirdly, there's a particularly egregious breach of the first law of thermodynamics — or at least there is if Pierre Villiers' description of how his automatons are powered is taken as gospel:

"The device is designed to power itself. When the automaton moves, a rotor inside its abdomen rocks back and forth, ratcheting the winding mechanism and causing the mainspring in the chest to become taut. Effectively, the unit is self-winding, and thus it will never power down, unless commanded to do so. If left inactive for long periods without instruction, the unit will eventually move itself to trigger the winding mechanism."

Mann, G., (2008), The Affinity Bridge, Snowbooks, 101

I suppose this could be considered a quibbling objection, given the unlikely nature of the rest of the clockwork technology, but I'd argue that those are all differences of degree whereas this is a clear impossibility. And one that could easily have been avoided by skipping, or having Villiers dodge, this section of the explanation of how the machines work.

But it's not all bad. Newbury is, after a pot of earl grey at least, a cheerful and dynamic hero who, despite his bookish background, seems quite prepared to chase monsters through the fog when the occasion demands it. Veronica, too, is good fun: clever and resourceful; able, once she has convinced herself that she won't be showing her ankles to anyone improper, to kick down doors; and a good match for Newbury in the schmoozing stakes. And the characters have a nice Brief Encounter type relationship with each other, with both aware of an attraction, but neither really willing to say or do anything about it in case it jeopodises their friendship.

While it might seem as though I'm negative about the book, I'm not. It kept me entertained on an unpleasant train journey, I enjoyed it enough to buy the sequel, The Osiris Ritual, and I'd happily recommend to anyone after a light, steampunk thriller.