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    Infernal Devices
    Infernal Devices
    Infernal Devices
    Audiobook9 hours

    Infernal Devices

    Written by K.W. Jeter

    Narrated by Michael Page

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    When George’s father died, he left his son a watchmaker’s shop—and a whole lot more.

    But George has little talent for watches and other infernal devices. When someone tries to steal an old device from the premises, George finds himself embroiled in a mystery of time travel, wild music and sexual intrigue.

    “This is the real thing—a mad inventor, curious coins, murky London alleys and windblown Scottish Isles…a wild and extravagant plot that turns up new mysteries with each succeeding page.” —James P. Blaylock

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateOct 18, 2011
    ISBN9781455848744
    Infernal Devices
    Author

    K.W. Jeter

    K.W. Jeter is a science fiction and horror author. Some of his works include tie-in novels for Star Trek and Star Wars.

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    Reviews for Infernal Devices

    3.5/5

    143 ratings16 reviews

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Hmmm ten words? Really really really really fun to listen to. Love this style, the narrator was excellent, and the weird Topsy - Turvy angle.
    • 4/5
      From the man who coined the term "steampunk", an early example of the genre.Young Mr. Dower inherits his father's watch shop. Unfortunately, the Dowers never had much contact, and Young Mr. Dower has no idea how to repair the watches people bring to him. His shop is on the brink of collapse when an adventure comes his way: several parties are interested in a mysterious, and very complicated, device that his father has built. Dower's path leads him from the seediest section of London to a country manor to being stranded on the outermost island of the Hebrides. Just when things look darkest, Dower manages to escape by the skin of his teeth.While it was a fun read, Dower's stiff Victorian narration made it a bit of a slog in places. Also, Miss McThane could have been so much more interesting, but all she did was lust after Dower and rip her clothes off a lot. I am glad that more current examples of steampunk give women and girls a lot more to do with their brains. I loved Adrienne Kress's The Friday Society and Libba Bray's short story "The Last Ride of the Glory Girls". This was just fun enough that I would like to check out some of K.W. Jeter's science fiction at some point down the line.
    • 4/5
      I've had this book vaguely on my mental list of books that might be interesting for a long time, but I picked it up on pure whim. I'm interested in how many low reviews it has: I think the problem is that people expect something great and marvelously written from the book that inaugurated such a huge cultural phenomenon as steampunk. It's not that. It's fun, silly, often ridiculous, and in no way intended to be taken too seriously, I think.

      It's a juxtaposition of ideas, written very much in the tradition of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells and with a protagonist that reminds me very much of the common mental image of bumbling, unintelligent John Watson. (Which usually ignores that he is a doctor, an army man, and capable of handling fire arms, not to mention trusted by Holmes who is obviously no idiot. He has a certain lack of imagination, yes, but he's not as stupid as the stereotype would have you believe -- and certainly not as stupid as the protagonist of this novel.)

      I thought it was fun, and actually pretty absorbing. Not convincing as anything serious, but fun. I'm glad Angry Robot republished it, it's been a nice diversion from waiting for the slow wheels of the NHS to turn.
    • 4/5
      Started somewhat slow and hard to follow, but it really picked up the pace by the end. The humor was laugh out loud by that point. I hope to read other Jeter books as well: seems like he has a sense of humor I can appreciate.
    • 3/5
      Definitely one of the Books I Should Have Read Already, though I have tried three other times. I just couldn't get into it. But I finally did.I like steampunk. The visual art element anyway. I like the creativity. Not the gluing on of gears, but a lot of really fun stuff is out there. The thing about steampunk is that is is completely impossible, so I can usually take it in stride. Literary steampunk, on the other hand, is a challenge. For some reason, authors feel like they need to develop neologisms to separate their stories from "ordinary" fantasy fiction. Jeter doesn't have quite as many, but if he's one of the grandfathers of modern steampunk literature, then he's partially to blame for encumbering a story with unwieldy language - to set it apart, and to set it in the chosen time period, I'm guessing. Still, unlike so-called "hard" science fiction, in which there're always things inconsistent within the framework of the universe crafted, which are glaringly obvious, steampunk, unburdened from "clacking" and such is easy to swallow.But Jeter wove some really bizarre stuff in this book. Absurd even in his universe. I think I settled on him spiking satirical with some of the really out there interjections. I've got a few more of the origins of steampunk literature to try. Checking this one off.There's a reasonably decent story here, somewhat burdened by those onerous syntactical constructs.
    • 2/5
      There's some great stuff in here, but some books would be so much better with a strong editor, and this is one of them .

      the audio version was entertaining but this is very visual storytelling with a scene by scene series of interconnected plots, characters and locales, so it would make an even more interesting hanna-barbera meets porco rosso meets wizard of oz sort of live action w green screen "who framed roger rabbit" sorta thing, but even then who would do the flying machine special effects? i have no idea !

      regardless, there are all the trappings of dime novel fun here to keep you entertained and few wonderful twists and turns to keep you thinking too, so even at two measly stars i'm still encouraging you to give it a try, especially if piscene creatures or the goings-on of automaton enthusiasts are your thing !
    • 4/5
      This is a fun ride of a book, set with the tone of a Sherlock Holmes mystery and beautifully detailed. It isn't hard to imagine how Jeter's vision here ended up being foundational to steampunk as a genre. The way he's mixed Victorian culture with noir-ish atmospheres, technological progress and mis-steps, and humor with suspense, the work ends up being an incredibly entertaining mix of settings, genres, and characters.All told, the book's narrator is a bit more formal and unemotional than the ones I'm normally drawn toward, but that said, his personality is so much a part of the book -- and so important to the book -- that it ends up working rather well. I can't say that the characters here are the most engaging of the fantasy and sci-fi I've come across, but they are believable and fascinating, and the plot moves so quickly that that is the driving force.In the end, I'm glad I picked this up as my first foray into steampunk--I'll likely be looking into more of Jeter's work and more steampunk in general.If this sounds up your alley, or if you're interested in ducking your head into steampunk, I certainly recommend this. It won't be for nearly every reader, but I imagine anyone who feels something of an interest won't end up being disappointed!
    • 3/5
      Very well written prose - quite enjoyable - although some very odd but interesting tangents. The son of an inventor is brought into a confusing situation around the inventions that his father created, including one that could destroy the Earth. Alls well that ends well.
    • 2/5
      Failed, early, SteampunkeryGeorge's father has left him his watchmakers shop full of weird and complex machinery that he can never understand and then comes a mysterious figure wanting him to fix a device and intrigued he digs further into a world of the anti-science brigade, of strange creatures and dastardly machines, heathen religions and futuristic deprivations.A story that should have worked: fantastic machines, check, Lovecraftian sinister overtones, check, tongue in cheek Victoriana, check, raucous adventure story, check. However I soon fell out of love with it and positively skimmed when towards the end when characters starting explaining the plot in large chunks. I did try to ignore that fact that two characters spoke in modern day (?) Americanisms, yes with an in-character reason but explained at the end and that doesn't make sense anyway). I could grit my teeth and bear the fact that out of three female characters two were lust driven nymphos who wanted to have sex with the main character right there and then. And the play on Victorian racism, um wince! I understand (and sometimes enjoy) the passive, bumbling hero trope but its only endearing if you are enjoying the book and to be honest I stopped 3/4 of the way through.This is an example of the burgeoning Steampunk genre in the 80's by the guy who coined the term Steampunk himself. It does have an afterword by Jeff Vandermeer who obviously liked it more than I but unless you are not sensitive to sexism or clumsy plotting and are non British so that the lingo doesn't make you cry I really can't recommend it's worth it.
    • 2/5
      K.W. Jeter is considered on of the godfathers of steampunk, and is even credited with inventing the name for the genre, but this was just so-so. Too many moving parts o ever get into any kind of story-telling flow. Probably make a better movie.
    • 3/5
      First off: the kindle ebook is absolutely INFESTED with typos. Jeter should be furious about it.Fast-paced to a fault. The endless forward-motion of the plot is fun at the beginning when there's enough detail to support it, and enough logic (and mystery) behind the direction of events to create a kind of detective-story scheme, but by book 2 things become tiresome. Text-speed never matches even moments of ostensible slowness (surface description, thoughts, etc), as if due to some kind of weird eye-glazing momentum (which I partially attribute to the smooth Victorian voice). The dialogue, though always interesting and well-crafted, becomes overly didactic by this point as well. Explanations of events are exclusively (and amateurishly) provided in boring multi-page monologues. These could be good if they were given more gravity and character, such as I'd hoped the climactic confrontation between Dower and the mechanical man would have (but which turned out to be a huge let-down, though I suspect this was oddly intentional).The voice of the Victorian narrator is one of the book’s highlights, though it ends up falling flat during the running/escaping/landscape scenes (which, unfortunately, take up most of the novel). Jeter rarely lets it shine, and only, it seems, when the scene is indoors.Scape is a fun character. But his backstory should’ve been explained through ACTION instead of a few flat lines of explanatory dialogue. Like the rest of the novel, a good idea is mishandled.
    • 3/5
      Without question, this book is the strangest book that I have ever read. And not in a good, unpredicatable kind of way. More of a "What the...?" kind of way. Everything was so surreal and seemingly unconnected and unexplained that I became weary. I just wanted something, anything, to be explained so that I could latch back onto the story. I guess that in that way Jeter does a good job of letting readers experience George's confusion and does keep the promise of answers hovering in the distance but, for me, it was a bit too much.The characters are, on the whole, extremely unlikeable. I did feel for George, spending every day of his life on a trade that he has neither chosen nor is any good at and living constantly in his father's shadow. As a result, he comes across as rather wet and defeated. No matter what opportunities present themselves, however, and no matter how strange things get, he plods. Even after apparently having been kicked into action by a theft, George is reluctant and always a victim. Early on, I wanted to shake him. Later on, I'd lost the will to even do that. The unfortunately named 'Brown Leather Man' (and yes, that is because that's George's perception of his appearance...) is sufficiently intriguing but not particularly pleasant. He also happens to meet a pair of hustlers that use jarringly futuristic. The male half of the pair is only mildly irritating. The female half appears to think that the solution to every situation is seducing George...and she's supposed to be liberated...Whether or not you enjoy this book will most probably come down to one thing: whether or not you are happy with retrospective enjoyment. Once I'd finished the book and all of its secrets had been revealed, I could appreciate that it really was quite clever and was quirky in a reasonably good way. While I was reading it, however, I came close to putting it to one side plenty of times because I didn't have a single clue what on earth was going on, never mind why. Unfortunately, me and retrospective enjoyment aren't great friends; call me crazy but I actually want to enjoy something while I'm reading it, not after. The problem with being hailed as the forefather of a popular sub-genre is that people go into it expecting it to be the finest example of that genre, rather than a seed of an idea. This is to steampunk what Bram Stoker's Dracula is to modern vampire/paranormal fiction; the same elements are there, just not in the way readers have come to expect. Where Dracula and Infernal Devices certainly differ is that the former is a fantastic example of a genre that has been distilled over time while the latter is a mediocre example of a genre that has been enhanced over time.Overall: If you're already a well-inducted steampunk fan, this book is interesting and the edition I read has a brilliant introduction by the author written some 20 years after this was published and after 'steampunk' had really taken off. If you're thinking of reading steampunk and are looking around for where to start, don't start here. You'll come away feeling perturbed and I can't imagine you would be eager to try anything else. Alternative reads: Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate series; Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan series.
    • 2/5
      While I admired the author's ability to emulate the tone of a Victorian author and paint the story's images in my mind, that was unfortunately countered by a lack of characters I cared about and a plot I couldn't buy into. I had the feeling that the only character for whom the author had any compassion was the dog -- in fact I wonder if the author would have preferred to have written an ending where the Brown Leather Man actually succeeded in his final goal.Other negatives for me: the idea that one man had developed so many different ground-breaking inventions, the general lack of any true science behind any of those inventions and other pseudo-science aspects in the story (in effect making this a fantasy book, not a sci-fi book), and I didn't care for the constant use of long monologues by various characters to explain the plot, making me feel like I was watching a campy B movie.
    • 4/5
      Lots of fun, and clearly the granddaddy of steam punk -- it has all the tropes -- automatons, round blue glasses, corsets, improbable machines, St. Monkfish! Who couldn't love St. Monkfish. Definitely a novel of ideas, and what fun notions they are.
    • 4/5
      One of the earlier steampunk novels, although not necessarily dealing with steam power itself, but more often clockwork. Some aspects of this novel can be seen in other steampunk works, such as the revelation of a hidden world to a naive protagonist, otherworldly creatures, and clockwork doppelgangers.
    • 4/5
      Cool but I wanted it to be darker. Scape should have been a demon. The fish people had that Innsmouth feel. It ended up more like _Neverwhere_.