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    The Kingdom Beyond the Waves
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    The Kingdom Beyond the Waves
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    The Kingdom Beyond the Waves
    Ebook611 pages12 hours

    The Kingdom Beyond the Waves

    By Stephen Hunt

    3.5/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

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    About this ebook

    A fantastical version of Dickens, filled with perilous quests, dastardly deeds and deadly intrigue – perfect for all fans of Philip Pullman and Susanna Clarke

    Professor Amelia Harsh is obsessed with finding the lost civilisation of Camlantis, a legendary city from pre-history that is said to have conquered hunger, war and disease – tempering the race of man’s baser instincts by the creation of the perfect pacifist society. It is an obsession that is to cost her dearly. She returns home to Jackals from her latest archaeological misadventure to discover that the university council has finally stripped her of her position in retaliation for her heretical research.

    Without official funding, Amelia has no choice but to accept the offer of patronage from the man she blames for her father’s bankruptcy and suicide, the fiercely intelligent and incredibly wealthy Abraham Quest. He has an ancient crystal-book that suggests the Camlantean ruins are buried under one of the sea-like lakes that dot the murderous jungles of Liongeli.

    Amelia undertakes an expedition deep into the dark heart of the jungle, blackmailing her old friend Commodore Black into ferrying her along the huge river of the Shedarkshe on his ancient u-boat. With an untrustworthy crew of freed convicts, Quest’s force of female mercenaries on board and a lunatic steamman safari hunter acting as their guide, Amelia’s luck can hardly get any worse. But she's as yet unaware that her quest for the perfect society is about to bring her own world to the brink of destruction…

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins UK
    Release dateSep 4, 2008
    ISBN9780007283507
    Unavailable
    The Kingdom Beyond the Waves
    Author

    Stephen Hunt

    Stephen Hunt is the author of several fantasy titles set in the Victorian-style world of the Kingdom of Jackals and is also the founder of www.SFcrowsnest.com, one of the oldest and most popular fan-run science fiction and fantasy websites, with nearly three quarters of a million readers each month. Born in Canada, the author presently lives in London, as well as spending part of the year with his family in Spain

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    Reviews for The Kingdom Beyond the Waves

    3.5/5

    12 ratings12 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Enjoyable and inventive, sits firmly in the "steampunk" category but is not constrained by it. There are some machinations between political factions that were not particularly interesting to me - I tend to get bored with them after a while and remember only enough so that I don't get confused. However, that's a personal thing; many people consider that a plus ("Dune" fans, I'm looking at you.)The world is well-drawn, though I did want more backstory and/or development of the main character (Amelia). Possibly reading the earlier book of his ("Court of the Air") would have helped.
    • 4/5
      Having picked this up as a kind of, "Ahh, what the heck, $2.00 is worth it," buy in a used bookshop, with some reservations having read the first in the series a couple of years back, I found I liked this book quite a bit. I'd forgotten some of the details of the world, but that is fine. It almost makes me want to revisit the first book since my main complaint there was that it was too long, too convoluted, too everything-and-the-kitchen-sink... maybe I'd be more into it now than I was then.

      4 stars, though really I think the (current) average of ~3.75 is closer to it. I'd probably rate this a 3.5 if I could, and 3 seems like underrating more than 4 is overrating.
    • 5/5
      I thought this was a definite step up from the first book. I thought the action was well paced and I really cared about the characters on the adventure.

      I thought it was better paced and the story flowed better than the previous book. All around a great book!
    • 2/5
      I seemed to remember liking the first book in this series enough to put the sequel on my wishlist. But, upon reading this, I realized that I hardly remembered any details of the previous book (Court of the Air), and I really didn't particularly like this book.
      It's action-packed... but rather than being exciting and emotional, events rush by so quickly that they're barely described, and they don't have time to make an impression, let alone an impact. Neither the characters or the settings came to life for me, and the plot elements were so sketchily outlined that they were sometimes confusing. (Well, except that some of them were lifted from 'Heart of Darkness.')
      I liked a lot of the steampunk-y concepts and gadgetry - too bad most of them were cadged from China Mieville's Bas-Lag novels. (I mean, seriously, there're lobster-people, bird-people, and cactus-people, as well as sentient robots. Sound familiar?) A few digs at Mieville's politics are thrown in there too, for good measure.
      On top of it, it ends up with my Least Favorite Trope of Fantasy: the super-powerful Thing which could confer Mystic Knowledge must be destroyed/gotten rid of, because Humanity Isn't Ready, and it's Too Dangerous. Blah to all that.
      If I had been more entertained, I wouldn't mind, but I ended up reading as fast as I could, just to get to the end. It's too bad, because I feel like this ought to be the sort of book I would like.
    • 4/5
      I'm really enjoying this pulpy series, reminscent of Jack Vance's Dying Earth and China Mieville.
    • 4/5
      The Kingdom Beyond the Waves is an absolute improvement on the first book in Hunt's steampunk series. Gone is the untamed mess of ideas and characters and storylines; in its place is a streamlined, two-pronged adventure that comes together without confusion in the end. It's still ambitious and epic, but in a much more focused, precise way. If you felt like there was much to enjoy in The Court of the Air but that the execution left something to be desired, this book will seem like a reward for giving the author a second chance.
    • 3/5
      The Kingdom Beyond the Waves is much more coherent a narrative than The Court of the Air -- I suppose it probably helps that a lot of the world is established already, and that some of the characters and concepts are familiar, but the story does seem to flow better too. Well enough that I think I will read the third book (if my library ever gets it in, anyway) and give Stephen Hunt the benefit of the doubt one more time. The last half of the book was genuinely gripping, though I did pause partway through for a long time before getting back into it.

      It's fun to read, quite a lot of fun, but... I don't know. Too many characters, too few bonds between characters, too many improbable survivals and last minute rescues.
    • 4/5
      Excuse me while I go kick myself for not picking this one a lot earlier. Unlike the previous entry in the series, this is a lot more streamlined in terms of plot, and I had a lot more fun reading it. (Not saying that I don’t love the first book, but this is a lot better with the writing.)

      Unlike Court of the Air, the plot of Kingdom Beyond the Waves is a lot more straightforward. There’s still a lot of jumping back and forth between the protagonists, but seeing as their interests lie with the same man, Abraham Quest, it’s a lot easier to follow and guess at what his ultimate plans are. It’s a little jarring to go from high adventure to mystery steampunk noir, but not to the point of keeping detailed charts like the first book. And I also like the fact that this is really more of an adventure tale in the tradition of H. Rider Haggard.

      Seeing as Amelia Harsh was one of my favorite characters from Court of the Air (all two and half pages she showed up on), I was really excited to find out that she’s the main character here. Like with Molly and Oliver, she’s another character type that comes straight out of the pulps—the obsessive professor dedicated to her father’s dying dream. She does play it a little straighter than the earlier characters, but I like that she’s willing to save Jared’s crew, even if it means giving up her dream. Cornelius Fortune is a bit more intriguing, as he’s putting on a double-life as a ne’er-do-well count and as Furnance-Breath Nick. I liked his scenes a little more, as he brought more intrigue to the plot.

      I do think the real stars are the supporting casts. Commodore Black was a fantastic character in book one, and to see him in full force with his crew was fabulous. I’m hoping that they get their own book to star in. I even liked the crew that Quest brings on, even though their purposes are a lot more muddled, there’s still a loyalty built between both crews. AND I LOVE IRONFLANKS. You know the crusty old guide who’s only in it for booze money and knows all the dangers of the jungle river and would probably make a heroic sacrifice? Now make him a steampunk robot. It really shouldn’t work, but it does, and I love him for it. (Oh, and his white whale is multi-eyed Tyrannosaurus rex queen that learned how to swear. Seriously, this series runs on so much Rule of Cool and it works and I love it.) Not sure how much I like Septimoth, although I do love his interactions with Damson Beeton. Oh, and Damson Beeton is PURE WIN FOREVER. (I seal-clapped when her first big revelation moment came.) And the villain has a more defined goal in this book, as opposed to overreaching political philosophy.

      As with the first book, what really works in this series is the world building. I liked the move to the jungles and exploring the cultures that arose there and even the exploration of an ancient society. The real world parallels are little more obvious in this book (to the point where I’m hoping that the end isn’t going to be “Oh, this was our world the whole time.” Because that would suck.) And going with the steampunk element, I like that it’s taking the idea out of gaslit cities and really exploring this world. We have submarines now; the steammen society in the jungle are equipped with multiple machetes. And I like that there’s less mysticism in this book—there’s still elements of magic and sorcery, but we’re also seeing how normal people cope in this world.

      There are some downsides to this, though. The lashlites are cool—flying lizards!—but I have no idea what their larger role in the plot had to do with anything. If Hunt had just left in Septimoth, it would be better, but I really didn’t get what adding the whole of the lashlites to the final battle does for anything. I’m not a fan of the full explanation of why Amelia is so obsessed with Camlantis, it feels like too much speculation on the antagonist’s part. And I was really disappointed with the Daggish, mostly because they were set up as a terrifying threat—hive-mind race of trees that enslave unsuspecting travelers and mind-wiping them—and we only get to see the once and they don’t even do anything.

      However, I did have a lot of fun reading this. I’d actually recommend starting with Kingdom Beyond the Waves rather than Court of the Air, as it’s much more streamlined plot-wise and while there’s a few elements from the former book that are carried over, they’re explained without dragging the plot down. It’s a really fun book, with some really interesting ideas.
    • 5/5
      I was going to start off this review saying that Hunt was a poor man's China Mieville but he's actually much more like a rich nobleman's China Mieville (if you have China in the position of king or demi-god this makes more sense right?) Obviously I gave the book 4.5 stars so he couldn't have been that poor. This story is a lot like China's [book:Perdido Street Station|68494]. Filled with a mix of non-fantasy-standard races and some very cool ideas about magic, steampunk and voodoo. It's action packed, like an Indiana Jones movie. Characters are continuously finding themselves in desperate situations and then escaping (or sometimes not escaping) by the hair of their teeth.Lots of fun and a cool world, seamlessly fleshed out so you feel like it really exists/ed. This is actually the 2nd book in this world but I was assured by the friend that recommended it that there was no need to read them in order.Looking forward to -The Court of the Air-.
    • 3/5
      (Bk 2 of series)Steampunk-fantasy-adventure a la Jules Verne feel...there is soooo much going on in this entry of the series. For example: clockwork computers, an assasin who is a shapeshifter, oh and let's not forget Professor Amelia Harsh, an archaeologist who is magically enhanced and a submarine manned by a less than savory crew - among many other things...now to try to find the rest of the series...
    • 4/5
      Crazed Raiders of the Lost Ark serials-type adventure in Hunt's usual style for this series. Every success followed by a greater cliffhanger disaster. Reasonably satisfying, bad guy had believable motivation.
    • 3/5
      Stephen Hunt writes steampunk. Steampunk is a bit of an obscure sci-fi sub-genre and I heard of it only recently even though I have previously read and, what’s more, played, steampunk books and games. Hunt’s novel, The Kingdom Beyond The Waves, is a gory affair with a macabre mix of characters and machines. Typical steampunk tends to be a strange blend of speculative fiction and nostalgic bemoaning for the age when the empire (the British one) was at its zenith. The stories of this genre tend to depict Victorian-like time with steam engine reigning supreme over all other forms of technology and providing power to fantastic machines ranging from airships to submarines to computer-like calculating wonders. Oddly enough, this imaginary world works a lot better as a computer game. Arcanum, for example, is a typical steampunk game full of automatons, ingenious traps and complicated technological contortions with an underlying environmental moral. Steampunk, as farfetched as it is, is an interesting exercise in what-if kind of thinking. What if we continued to develop technologies that did not depend on electricity and jet propulsion? What if after Hindenburg disaster we did not get spooked and continued to developed airship technology?Hunt's novel is a great piece of escapism, but not necessarily more than that. It's strengths are interestingly crafted story and a strong female protagonist and should be enjoyed for what it is.