Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Karen Memory
    Karen Memory
    Karen Memory
    Audiobook13 hours

    Karen Memory

    Written by Elizabeth Bear

    Narrated by Jennifer Grace

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    "You ain't gonna like what I have to tell you, but I'm gonna tell you anyway. See, my name is Karen Memery, like memory only spelt with an e, and I'm one of the girls what works in the HOtel Mon Cherie on Amity Street. HOtel has a little hat over the o like that. It's French, so Beatrice tells me." Set in the late 19th century--when the city we now call Seattle Underground was the whole town (and still on the surface), when airships plied the trade routes, would-be gold miners were heading to the gold fields of Alaska, and steam-powered mechanicals stalked the waterfront, Karen is a young woman on her own, is making the best of her orphaned state by working in Madame Damnable's high-quality bordello. Through Karen's eyes we get to know the other girls in the house--a resourceful group--and the poor and the powerful of the town. Trouble erupts one night when a badly injured girl arrives at their door, beggin sanctuary, followed by the man who holds her indenture, and who has a machine that can take over anyone's mind and control their actions. And as if that wasn't bad enough, the next night brings a body dumped in their rubbish heap--a streetwalker who has been brutally murdered. Bear brings alive this Jack-the-Ripper yarn of the old west with a light touch in Karen's own memorable voice, and a mesmerizing evocation of classic steam-powered science.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateFeb 3, 2015
    ISBN9781490668833
    Karen Memory
    Author

    Elizabeth Bear

    Elizabeth Bear was born on the same day as Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, but in a different year. She is the Hugo, Theodore Sturgeon Memorial, Locus, and Astounding Award–winning author of dozens of novels and over a hundred short stories. She has spoken on futurism at Google, MIT, DARPA’s 100 Year Starship Project, and the White House, among others. Find her at www.elizabethbear.com.  

    More audiobooks from Elizabeth Bear

    Related to Karen Memory

    Titles in the series (2)

    View More
    View More

    Related audiobooks

    Fantasy For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Last Smile In Sunder City

      Jan 29, 2020

      RELEASED 6 FEBRUARY 352 pages | Paperback/ebook/audiobook Author Luke Arnold Publisher Orbit Fans of Black Sails will likely find the name Luke Arnold familiar. He played John Silver in the pirate series, as well as being a mainstay on numerous other

      1 min read

    • Article

      SF Winners

      Aug 5, 2021

      The Locus Science Fiction Foundation announced the winners on the 2021 Locus Awards in June. The Locus, are along with the Hugo Awards the most significant US awards for science fiction and fantasy. The winners were: Science Fiction Novel, Network Ef

      1 min read

    • Article

      Also Out

      Oct 9, 2019

      As ever, there’s tons more books we couldn’t fit in. Almost-human wolves and a living ship made of bones are among the delights of Laird Hunt’s dark fairytale in THE HOUSE IN THE DARK OF THE WOODS (out now, One). Alison Littlewood’s MISTLETOE (out no

      1 min read

    • Article

      Typewriter

      Aug 2, 2021

      Chère Madame. Vous ne vous rappelleriez pas de moi, mais de ma part… Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap… She flicks the return bar – PING – and her fingers fall back into rhythm. Catherine’s French comes as naturally as the movement of her

      5 min read

    • Article

      It’s Come to This

      Sep 1, 2021

      It’s Come to This
      16 min read

    • Article

      Post Office Hotel, Maude

      Dec 19, 2018

      Post Office Hotel, Maude
      6 min read

    • Article

      What Ray Charles Says

      Mar 1, 2024

      The nighttime is the right time to be with the one you love, says Ray,but according to Hamlet, it’s when “churchyards yawn and hell itselfbreathes out contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood,”says Hamlet, “and do such bitter business as

      2 min read

    • Article

      Cleaning the Step

      Jan 4, 2024

      Ada waits until they’ve all gone – to school, to work if they’re lucky, to fritter away their pensions in the betting shop or sit in the sad little café on the main road, nursing cups of tea and remembering. Better to wait out of sight. Not everyone

      6 min read

    • Article

      Doug’s DIARY

      Mar 18, 2022

      I I always think about what I might write here in the weeks preceding the deadline, sitting at the dining room table to jot down my musings. This month was much the same as usual, and it was all in my head; stories of my trip to London, the making of

      6 min read

    • Article

      Yohanca Delgado

      Mar 9, 2021

      The widow arrived at LaGuardia on a Sunday, but the rumors about the woman who had rented a big apartment, sight unseen, had taken an earlier flight. We had already reviewed, on many occasions and in hushed tones, in the quiet that comes after long h

      15 min read

    • Article

      The Man I Should Have Married

      Dec 29, 2019

      The Man I Should Have Married
      11 min read

    • Article

      A Global Romance

      Jan 26, 2022

      A Global Romance
      2 min read

    • Article

      OreoArroyo

      Jul 6, 2021

      WHEN THE STRIPPER STRUTTED INTO THE LIBRARY, SHE COULDN’T hide her dismay. Probably, she and her bodyguard expected a bachelor party or investment bankers celebrating a big deal at the mansion overlooking the Newport Coast. She wouldn’t have anticipa

      21 min read

    • Article

      Sifting And Sorting With Joy

      Jul 20, 2020

      Friend Jan phones to ask if I’d like to buy his grandmother’s old pump organ. He is scaling down big time, he explains, moving house one last time. Actually, he corrects himself, it’s the penultimate move, the last one being the ABF (absolute bloody

      3 min read

    • Article

      Good Books Make Good Fuel

      Sep 21, 2022

      Is it time to burn my books? My wife has already told me she is getting rid of the lot the moment I go. So, given the cost-of-living crisis and the rocketing price of fuel, is this the year for me to clear the grate and set a match to all my treasure

      3 min read

    • Article

      Splash

      Feb 9, 2018

      Splash
      6 min read

    • Article

      People Are Strange

      Oct 13, 2019

      People Are Strange
      5 min read

    • Article

      Doug’s DIARY

      Jun 17, 2022

      what a busy month it's been. Our feet have barely touched the ground, and our heads have all too brief ly felt the comfort of our soft pillows. It's midgie season, and we've just finished yet another late-night shift, slathered in insect repellent. I

      6 min read

    • Article

      ‘Cygnet’: Featured Fiction from Season Butler

      Jun 25, 2019

      A excerpt from Butler's debut coming-of-age novel, set in an appealingly rich world with quirky, flawed characters and a dramatic oceanfront landscape. The post ‘Cygnet’: Featured Fiction from Season Butler appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      The New Commandments

      Apr 22, 2020

      IT’S getting sombre. The PM’s trip to St Thomas’s winded us all. Our bluff gallows humour, the usual British response to crisis, evaporated. His resurrection (at Easter, with a timeliness that even Dominic ‘Second’ Cummings could not have engineered)

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Air You Breathe

      Aug 20, 2018

      The Air You Breathe
      23 min read

    • Article

      On The Road To Morocco – With Mum

      May 3, 2023

      I'm standing in a crowded souk in the bustling centre of Marrakesh, watching my 81-year-old mother haggling over a pretty Moroccan plate. It's hard to hear above the frantic hubbub, but I can tell she's doing a lousy job. The trick is to get the sell

      4 min read

    • Article

      You Only Need Two Bricks

      Sep 23, 2022

      We sat in front of a blazing fire in the hearth of the tiny hunting cabin. The chimney drew well as long as the door was kept slightly open, like Lem Putt advised, to get the draft just right. We were sipping a most wonderfully aged 56-year-old Caber

      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Karen Memory

    4/5

    234 ratings29 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Karen is a young woman on her own, is making the best of her orphaned state by working in Madame Damnable’s high-quality bordello. Trouble erupts one night when a badly injured girl arrives at their door, begging sanctuary, followed by the man who holds her indenture, and who has a machine that can take over anyone’s mind and control their actions. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, the next night brings a body dumped in their rubbish heap—a streetwalker who has been brutally murdered. I found this a lot of fun -- not fantasy, in and of itself, but steampunk and Elizabeth Bear, so I’m cool with it.
    • 2/5
      2.5/5 stars

      This was a solid in the middle book for me. I thought it was going to be super intriguing and fun with it's steampunk elements and whatnot, but it just felt middle of the road.

      I enjoyed the diversity present in the novel and how the author worked it into the plot and how the characters worked together.

      The plot was okay, but it felt a little slow for a while, and finally started to pick up about 2/3 through. So the pacing really didn't do it for me.

      The main characters voice was interesting but got a little annoying after a while. I couldn't get a long with the sentence structure and grammar, it just bugged me.

      Overall, it was fun, but not something I would read again.
    • 4/5
      This was a really quite enjoyable Wild West, Steampunk, Mystery Adventure. Yep, all those things. The narrator, Karen, has a very distinct, first person voice and I appreciated that the book even came around at the end and gave a reason for the first person narration. That's balm to my soul that. It's a pet peeve of mine to read first person POV and not know why I'm 'being told the story.'

      The book is also wonderfully diverse. There are characters of different races, nationalities, sexualities, and abilities. Several have prosthetic limbs, one blithely keeps a 'pecker' under her dress and several, despite being sorely uneducated, are still quite clever. It's a quite endearing mix. I enjoyed this aspect of the book quite a lot. Probably just as much as I adored the fact that this is sewing machine mecha (just stop and imagine that for a moment) and that there are men and women working together without any underlying sexual tension. How rare is that?

      However, I found the book quite slow. Plenty of action happens, but Karen's narrative style means that it is all just sort of relayed to the reader in a somewhat flat manner. It mutes some of the effect, I think. Don't get me wrong, I loved the way that same narrative tone highlighted her pragmatism about her profession and position. So, this was a bit of a double-edged sword. But it did mean there where times I found picking the book back up a bit of a chore.

      Additionally, there are more than a few convenient coincidences that allow the plot to progress. Like meeting an airship pilot just hours before the characters suddenly had need of an airship. It felt contrived.

      Despite my few complaints, I basically really enjoyed the characters and therefore their story. (I should probably note, just for accuracy's sake, that the book's description calls it a "Jack the Ripper yarn," but other than murdering prostitutes it doesn't have anything to do with that Jack. I might have accepted Jack the Ripper-like, but it's not a "Jack the Ripper yarn.")
    • 4/5
      A rip-roaring sci-fi western adventure which surrounds the vice district of Rapid City, WA. The central figure is a seamstress (read sex worker) Karen Memry, who becomes embroiled in a plot to destabilize the local government. She, her coworkers and employer find themselves under attack when they take in an abused sex worker who escaped from one of Peter Bantle's brutal slave dens. Bantle has designs on running for political office and also owns a prototype mind control device which he's using to get his way in most matters.Karen also bumps into a marshall who is on the trail of a brutal killer. They soon join forces to break up Bantle's vice ring and uncover a much larger plot to terrorize and forcibly seize control of the city. Meanwhile, Karen finds herself falling for the abused sex worker who's taken up residence in their brothel.This is a charming and original story although the pacing was hard to predict. I liked the setting and the wide ranging cast of characters.
    • 5/5
      I heard such delightful things about this book, and it lived up to the hype. Bear wrote a steampunk western with a strong voice, fascinating inventions, and a lovely diverse cast.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed the language of this book. It evoked a character who is not scholarly but also not stupid, just not formally educated. Considering how much of the book takes place in a whorehouse, I appreciated how the story alluded to the business of the place without ever going into useless sex scenes. Karen is a strong narrator and I enjoyed the time I spent with her.
    • 2/5
      I thought this book had a lot of promise to begin with. Prostitutes in a an alternate steampunk Wild West dealing with dark killing? Definitely sounded interesting. But a number of things tripped this book up for me.

      Firstly, the protagonists narrative style. It was annoying. Her use of slang and metaphor seemed overdone and repetetive.

      Secondly, I was unsure how I felt about Elizabeth Bear's adoption and use of Indian characters. While she a got a few things right, she also got a few things wrong including names.

      Thirdly, the scope of the 'stakes' of the book dramatically jumped in the last 25% of the book, and I was not entirely sure why. Why inflate a local political scandal and serial killer story into something of international scope? It felt tacked on.

      Fourthly, portions of the book were physically unrealistic. As in, the protagonist, who is a teenage girl of no special physical power repeatedly gets injured and yet continues to function at near optimum capabilities. The injuries towards the end especially should have killed her.

      So overall, it was a pretty ordinary story which did not fulfil the potential of its premise.
    • 5/5
      This book was so much fun! I am a sucker for a good mashup and this had a little romance, some intrigue, smart mechanical things, and a unique perspective on American history.
    • 4/5
      This story felt like a love letter to the old Wild Wild West show. It doesn’t slavishly copy it but by the time I was finished reading it I wanted to watch those old shows again. Karen works in an upper class bordello saving her money for when she can open her own business of training horses, a skill she learned from her departed dad. Things in town quickly get turned on its ear when they women of the house decide to shelter a cribhouse prostitute that was broken out and taken there by someone that has been harassing the owner of the cribhouse for a while now. Soon after a black US Marshall comes to town following a serial killer of prostitute across the West. Turns out that there is a lot more to the story than this and even with several bad turns for Karen and her friends there is a happy ending. The author’s note was very informative about sources she used for her world building.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this book a lot. There are a few flaws - namely that Karen's dialogue isn't consistent throughout the book and also that using "of" instead of "have" drives me nuts. Having that as a dialect trait was difficult to read. I got used to it, though, which made it easier to notice lapses in the usage.

      Overall, the story was interesting and fun. I love the steampunk setting although it's almost incidental to the plot. The characters are diverse in most cases (and made more interesting for being based on real people), but I did have trouble telling a few apart by name.

      If I had one major complaint, it's that the novel gets a little hijinx-filled to me, where everything that can go wrong, does, so that one crazy plan has to hatch another. It works, though.
    • 3/5
      I loved the setting of this mystery with a bit of fantasy to it: 19th Century Seattle (even though it goes by another name) just as the original city was being covered up, ultimately to become the Seattle Underground. It is a rough world and our heroine works at a high-class bordello where the workers are called "seamstresses". The mystery tootles along, but it is the atmosphere and characters that make the book worth reading.
    • 4/5
      Steampunk, the old west, Captain Nemo, serial killers. This book is right in my wheelhouse. I liked the book but it wasn't a 5 star for a reason I can't totally blame on the author. The similarities in setting to Cherie Priest's Clockwork Century books never quite left my mind and honestly I prefer Priest's books slightly more.

      This does not mean you shouldn't give this book a go. You absolutely should. It's fun and fast moving and if Bear writes a second book I will be on board. I will warn you the book is written in first person and has quite a few colloquialisms. If you don't like the main character's voice in the first chapter you should go ahead and out it down.
    • 3/5
      Cross Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate with Cherie Priest's Boneshaker.... sprinkle in some Cowboys & Aliens....
      I enjoyed this story. Have been meaning to try some of this author for a while, and this jumped off the New Books shelf into my hand, is the right sort of reading for me right now (brief, escapist, not too deep).
      Worth a go.
    • 3/5
      STEAMPUNK WESTERN LESBIANS!!!!

      I'm not a huge fan of sci-fi/fantasy/steampunk, primarily because the world-building is usually just a bunch of white heterosexuals. But not this book -- in fact, I think this book has one of the most diverse casts I've read in quite a while. The setting is made-up, but I definitely got a late 19th century San Franciso vibe from this.

      I really enjoyed it, so this rating is really more of a 3.5 stars. The plot has a lot of fluff to it in the beginning and the second half of the story didn't jell too well with the first half -- for me, anyway. The pacing felt off in some places and I had a hard time picturing some of the action. But again, I don't read much in this type of genre, so maybe it's just me.

      But overall, it's a quick, fun read, and honestly the diversity of the cast really elevated it to a much higher level. It seems like it's just a stand-alone novel, but I have to say, I'd gladly read a sequel/prequel.
    • 5/5
      I was excited to get a copy of Karen Memory because I enjoyed Elizabeth Bear’s Eternal Sky trilogy – it had an epic scope, a great unconventional setting and subverted a whole bunch of stereotypes of women in fantasy. Karen Memory is pretty different in both setting and tone (steampunk adventure featuring a lesbian prostitute protagonist), but it was still superb.Karen Memery is a “seamstress” at Madam Damnable’s upscale brothel Hôtel Mon Cherie in the burgeoning Rapid City. When Madam Damnable offers sanctuary to a girl escaping from the harsh conditions of Peter Bantle’s rather lower-scale establishment, he swears retribution and Karen gets swept up into the adventure of her life, involving a legendary lawman, a serial killer, a plot against the United States and more.Karen’s first-person narration really sells this book – she’s down to earth, but has a sharp wit, plain-spoken but charismatic, and most importantly, is full of heart. She’s had a tough life, and she doesn’t run away from that, but neither does she doesn’t let that stop her from being optimistic. It’s apparent that she’s no lady, but she’s definitely someone you’d want as a friend.All the supporting characters feel like people you’d want to know too. Of course there’s Priya, the indentured girl rescued from Bantle and Karen’s love interest – she’s whip-smart and has a core of steel, despite being abused. She’s a full, three-dimensional person that is treated as such and isn’t really exoticized at all despite being from India, which is pretty amazing (I’ve met people in real life who have the best intentions but feel like they have to treat me differently because I’m from India, so I really mean that it’s amazing). There’s the kind but determined U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves, who was a real person, and Tomoatooah, his badass Numu posseman, and Merry Lee the also-badass woman that rescued indentured slaves. And all the other girls at the Hôtel Mon Cherie have their own distinct personalities without any reference to what they do for a living (something that is carried over from the Eternal Sky trilogy and sorely missing from fantasy – a cast of mainly women that all defy stereotypes) – in fact, there’s very little sex in this book, and none actually described.The protagonist and the characters are the most charming things about Karen Memory, but it’s also a damn good adventure story. The pacing is excellent, and the stakes keep getting higher – what starts off as a simple mission to rescue Priya’s sister turns into helping Marshal Reeves find his killer, which turns into an attempt to stop Peter Bantle’s political ambition, and that leads into even more trouble. Karen grows as a character, learning to move on from her father’s death, discovering talents she didn’t know she had, and falling in love.I’m not super well-read in the steampunk genre, but I’ve learned to be wary of stories that are all about the gadgets. The steampunk elements in this book, though prevalent and integral to the plot, are just everyday items in the world Karen lives in. Gadget fans won’t be disappointed either – there’s the mandatory airship trip and a cool submersible, as well as some very useful household and medical devices – but they are just supplements to the plot and characters.I really need to go back and read Elizabeth Bear’s earlier work – between this and Eternal Sky, she’s shown she has incredible range.
    • 5/5
      Great. I don't read much steam punk, but if it's like this, I should!
    • 3/5
      This book came highly recommended, but I thought it was a mess. Poor pacing, and the first-person voice irked me. I did like the world-building, but the way the story was told spoiled it for me.
    • 3/5
      Told in the distinct voice of its narrator, Karen Memory is the story of young woman, Karen Memery, who works at a high end bordello in a steampunk version of the Pacific Northwest. One night two girls, one badly injured, show up on the doorsteps of Madame Damnable’s house, seeking shelter. They’re perused by a man with a machine that can control minds, and the trouble has only begun to start.“So why a woman did the same should be judged different … well, women always is. Judged different, I mean.”The highlight of Karen Memory is how it focuses on the normally marginalized. The majority of our protagonists are women working at Madame Damnable’s, and the cast is extremely diverse, on measures varying from gender, class, race and sexual orientation. Karen herself soon falls in love with Priya, one of the girls who wound up on Madame Damnable’s doorstep.For the most part, the steampunk elements of Karen Memory feel in the background. Karen’s POV presents a very narrow sliver of this world, focused in on her area of a fictional city reminiscent of 19th century Seattle. I feel like it might appeal to fans of Cherie Priest.But for what ever reason, I never connected with Karen Memory. I don’t hate it, but I don’t love it either. The entire time I was reading it I had the feeling that at any moment I would have no trouble putting the book down and walking away forever. While the story obviously has its heart in the right place, I never felt much of an emotional investment in the characters or plot. I would bet that there’s other people out there would find Karen Memory a rollicking adventure, and I hope that anyone picking it up has better success than I did.Review originally posted on The Illustrated Page.
    • 4/5
      An enjoyable steampunk romp in an alternate-history Seattle where a license for Mad Science is cheaper than one for being a seamstress and cryptids like hodags and gumberoos are common knowledge. Bear ably depicts an eclectic group of characters who stand up against a personal threat and wind up embroiled in a conflict with much higher stakes.
    • 4/5
      While I'm giving this book four stars if I could give it 3-3/4's that would probably better describe my reaction to it. This is to say that I admire the novel more than I like it in that I respect the thought and care that the author put into it but I also found it a little hard to keep engaged with the story. Part of it is due to the format of the narrative being provided as the memoir of our main character Karen Memery, which is inevitably a distancing device, but which is appropriate under the circumstances seeing as how the memoir was the main literary outlet for women of the period. There is also the matter that I might have enjoyed some perspective from another character in the story; perhaps Karen's love interest, perhaps the main antagonist. Still, this is one of the better exercises in steam punk that I've read in awhile and I wouldn't mind seeing some more stories set in this milieu considering some allusions made to great events in other quarters by one of the characters.
    • 5/5
      Pros: great world-building, fun characters, interesting plot Cons: some crude languageKaren Memery works as a ‘seamstress’ in Madame Damnable’s Hotel Mon Cherie. When two women knock on their door running from one of Peter Bantle’s cribs by the pier, Karen stands up to him and the roughs who’ve come to take the women back. Bantle’s got a special machine and he’s running for mayor, and things in Rapid City start to go downhill fast for the ‘seamstresses’, especially when U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves rolls into town, looking for a killer.You get a wonderful first chapter explaining how Karen’s a ‘seamstress’ and a seamstress, making her own dresses for her, ahem, actual work. You also get a great introduction to her co-workers and the environment they work in vs environments other ‘seamstresses’ have to work in. So when a ‘seamstress’ from a much worse environment show up, you’re already sympathetic towards her.The world is basically a decent sized town in the wild west, if the wild west had dirigibles and other steampunk accoutrements - like a souped up Singer sewing machine that straps on. There’s also a wide variety of characters, from the black marshal (patterned off of a real man), a lot of spunky women (not all of whom are white), some Russians, a native man, and others. The cast makes the city feel real - and remembers the history of the Western coast, with China towns, escaped slaves, indentured servants, and more. Bear’s prose is fun, seeing through Karen’s eyes, though it takes some getting used to as the grammar’s atrocious. There’s a lot of period - and character - appropriate terms (including derogatory terms for people of other races/nationalities) and swearing, which some may find offensive. The plot rambles a bit, as Karen isn’t always at the centre of things, but is quite interesting and coalesces in a series of fights that make for an exciting climax.This is an excellent book. Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      I loved this book! Both the voice and the pacing were perfect, and while it certainly has serious elements, it is in general pretty light.I loved the snapshots of the world illustrated by the various events, or just there for color and texture- like the guild of Mad Scientists.It's written by Karen in the fist person, and her voice is spot on. While it was a bit irritating at first to have her consistently write "should of" when we'd say "should have" was more accurate- it became just a part of the way she spoke/wrote; she is not a well-educated girl. I admired her pragmatism in choosing a life after her father died and left her essentially penniless.I also admire her ethics/morals. She drove much of the plot, based on her accurate conviction that "This isn't right", and "if not me, who? If not now, when?" Which is not to say she's moralizing! Indeed, she makes some questionable decisions... but she's only 16 (though she reads older).It's a great plot, with automatons (one derived from a sewing machine), mind-control rays, submarines, airships, clockwork limbs, and so much more... and yet, these are in many ways secondary to the plot, which is very human.Not only is Karen a very vivid character, so are the other characters in this- both friends and foes.Very recommended, to anyone to whom this description appeals!
    • 5/5
      I really enjoyed this book. It has a diverse set of well-drawn characters. I like what it does with steampunk -- enough for an interesting setting, but not so much as to overwhelm the story with "and here's another zany steampunk contraption!!". The plot keeps moving, and I didn't know how it would end.
    • 5/5
      This is Karen Memery’s story. She’s a prostitute, an orphan, a loyal friend, a fair shot, an excellent horsewoman, and a fair seamstress. Set in the western town of Rapid City in the late 1800s on the west coast of the US, most likely Washington territory, there’s plenty of little steampunk touches to keep me happy. However this story is mostly about the people, and I was not disappointed one bit.This tale is told in a first person manner as if you were reading Karen’s journal front to back like a printed novel. I instantly liked Karen. She wasn’t raised with much schooling though she has some common sense she learned from working with horses before she was orphaned. That common sense lead her to the bordello run by Madame Damnable, who has a peg leg and runs a respectable and clean establishment. She’s been saving up to move on once she is ready. But things go awry one night when Merry Li shows up with an indentured Indian (from India) woman named Priya. Both are in bad shape and the bordello ladies immediately have to face down Peter Bantle and a few of his men. It wasn’t easy.So starts some of the toughest days of Karen’s life. Street walkers are turning up dead and dumped in places they will be found. Marshall Bass Reeves plays a prominent role in this novel (hooray!). Here’s my little confession – until last year, I was completely oblivious to the historical figure Bass Reeves, the first black US Marshall west of the Mississippi. He made an excellent character in this novel. He’s hunting a serial killer that may somehow be connected to the mess in Rapid City.I’ve long been a fan of Elizabeth Bear’s work because she has such a variety of characters in her novels. This book is no exception. We have folks from so many backgrounds. Russian, Indian, Chinese, Native American, African American, French, and probably some others are all represented in this novel. Most of them are multi-dimensional. Now to add to that, this story has folks of various sexual orientation. Hooray! SFF in general needs more of this. There’s a touch of romance and it was very sweet to see through Karen’s eyes.Then we have all the awesome tech. It’s there, it just doesn’t eclipse the kickass characters and the plot. There was a submersible, a few dirigibles, a very fancy Singer sewing machine, and a mind control device that is put to nefarious deeds. There were references to more things, like mad scientist duels, and such. These steampunk touches were enough to add to the scenery but not enough to become the focus and take away from the plot and characters.I have to talk about the horses. These are important to Karen and since I have donkeys, I really connected with what she felt towards the horses Bass Reeves and his posse man (Sky) brought with them. Karen grew up with horses and had several ‘friends’ among the horses. When she was orphaned, she had to give all that up and it was terribly hard. Now she finds herself around these horses and so many feelings she had kept under lock and key come to the surface. Tear-jerking scenes folks! As Karen says, once you’ve made a friend of a horse, your life will never be the same again.The plot had some unexpected turns. I simply didn’t want to put this book down. It started off with this parlor showdown between Madame Damnable’s ladies and Bantle and his men and the tension was kept going throughout, though there were plenty of scenes that were more intense. At first, there’s simply this immediate problem to deal with, but that leads to a bigger issue and then that one leads to yet a bigger issue. It was very well done. This story left me feeling highly satisfied. Yet I can’t but hope for another story set in the same world, or even another Karen Memery story.I received this book free of charge from the publisher (via Audiobook Jukebox) in exchange for an honest review.The Narration: Jennifer Grace did a most excellent job with this book. Most of the book is in Karen’s voice, but Grace had a range of accents and voices for all the other characters. Her male voices were quite believable. I especially liked her voice for Priya and her voice for Bass Reeves.
    • 4/5
      I like books that have strong female characters and Karen Memery is certainly strong. She is maybe a little too good to be true but if Bruce Willis in all those Die Hard movies can keep surviving then why not Karen?Karen is a prostitute working out of Madame Damnable's Hotel Mon Cherie in a city somewhat like Seattle during the Gold Rush. She doesn't intend to make her living this way forever and hopes to follow her father who was a horse trainer before a horse killed him. She is putting aside money but not too eager to rock the boat. That is, until an East Indian girl accompanying a Chinese woman who was shot extricating her from the dock side bordello, arrives at the door of Hotel Mon Cherie. The women in the house take the two in but shortly after Peter Bantle, a notorious local businessman who holds the Indian girl's indenture papers, kicks in the door and demands her back. Madame Damnable makes it clear that is not going to happen but Bantle isn't going to take the loss lying down. Karen has fallen hard for Priya, the East Indian girl, and is determined to keep her out of harm's way. If that takes shutting Peter Bantle down then she is going to try her best. She has help from many others including Marshall Bass Reeves from the Indian Territory who is searching for a murderer and thinks the man may be in Bantle's company. A rollicking good read.
    • 3/5
      I have been wanting to read this book since it released (and even before it released). I read the first 200 pages of it but had a very hard time staying engaging in the story. There is some cool alternate history/steampunk stuff in here, but the story moves very slowly.Karen works at a bordello. The life of her and her fellow working girls gets complicated when an injured girl shows up at their door seeking sanctuary. Shortly after that another girl ends up dead in the alleyway outside of their house. Initially it looks like both events might be tied together. By sheltering the injured girl, the madam of the house has put herself in direct competition with another force in the city. However, when a Marshall shows up hunting down a serial killer they find out that the mystery might be much more complex than expected.There wasn’t anything awful about this book I just had a very hard time engaging in the story. I read the first 200 pages of the book and felt like it moved really really slow. At 200 pages in we were just starting to get involved in the mystery surrounding the deaths of working girls in the area. I also had some trouble engaging with the characters; there are a lot of them. The story is told from Karen’s point of view but I had a lot of trouble engaging with her as a character and really caring what happened to her. All the characters were all okay, they just weren’t all that interesting to read about.There were some interesting alternate history details in here and I did enjoy those. However, that wasn’t worth slogging through the tedious day to day life of these working girls. I finally just gave up because it was a struggle for me to stay interested in the story and I have a lot of other great books to read.Overall this was a slow read that I found fairly boring. It takes a long time for the mystery to get going. I did enjoy some of the alternate history details in here, but I had trouble caring about the characters or engaging in the plot. I wouldn’t recommend this book. There are many other very good alternate history/steampunk books out there. I would recommend checking out Cherie Priest’s Clockwork Century series or Meljean Brook’s Iron Seas series.
    • 5/5
      This is close to a perfect book. Fun. Sheer fun, and an absolute joy to read, the wordsmithing is that good. "They boiled into the room like a confusion of scalded weasels..." - how can you not fall in love with that? Wild West with ragged steampunk around the edges, with a nice little love story woven throughout. There's an added bonus in that Marshal Bass Reeves is a character in the book, and it's nice that more attention has been called to a man who led a remarkable life. What is best is the respect that is accorded to all in this book, which is a rarity in most books. (That respect applied to gay, lesbian, and trans*persons, and non-white people, who suffered with terrible indignities when they happened to rise above invisible status.)
    • 5/5
      When someone says steampunk, it immediately brings to mind London and Queen Victoria. Even if there are some stories set in the States, it is rare and usually concentrated in the big cities of the East. Well - it was time for a story that is steampunk but is set in the Indian Territories - in the area which is destined to become Seattle (or at least somewhere there) - but for now, in the novel - welcome to Rapid City - the closest port to Anchorage and the golden fever of Alaska - a city of sailors, mad scientists and seamstresses (they even possess a few sewing machines - after all this is what the city licenses them as - it will be shameful for those citizens to call them whores, right?).Meet our gracious host on this journey - Karen Memery (like memory but with "e" as she is quick to explain to her readers). She works on Madam Damnable's bordello (even if noone calls it this way because of all this virtue and what's not so important to everyone - especially when they visit the young ladies working there). And she has a good life there - it is easier job than a manual one; she makes enough money to be able to dream of the life after and the house is one of the best - with the madam not being a bad person or forcing anyone about anything. Until one day, an Indian (as in from India) girl is saved from her crib where she had been forced to work as a whore and in the process the rescuer get shot and needs help and ends up at Madam Damnable's door. And the life as they all know it is gone forever. The girls in the house are very young - the kind of young that would send Social Services to their doors today if they decide to practice the oldest profession - a 16 years old is considered one of the older girls. Such are the times - and the novel does not sugarcoat the realities of 12 years old girls that are forced to sell themselves - it is not a commentary on the practice; it is just part of life. And in a lot of cases when someone did something, I had to remind myself that these are girls, that no matter what they had been doing, they are still children, some of them still growing their bodies and height. But back to the story - where the Indian girl (Priya) finds her home in Madam Damnable's house (as a domestic help after she refuses to work as a whore) and things start getting back to normal. Except for the fact that Priya belonged to the worst possible man - a sadistic and unscrupulous man that would go to whatever lengths needed to have her back - and destroy the madam in the process. Which does not sit very well with the girls; not to mention the US Marshal Bass Reeves that had travelled after a murderer that kills whores and leaves their ruined bodies to be found (whoever did not think of Jack the Ripper had not been paying attention - and no, the guy did not come from London and this is not a Jack the Ripper story but the types of crimes are matching for a reason - the timing is right after all). A house fire, mind control, submarine, airships, explosions, a Comanche, young love (our narrator Karen really falls for Priya and the tentative budding romance is handled nicely), daring escapes and chases - the novel has it all. And somehow it pulls it off - from the descriptions of a city in the middle of being elevated so it does not get flooded to the descriptions of the submersible and air ships - everything fits, everything makes sense. Of course there is enough automatons (it is steampunk after all) and a lot of them get used in such creative ways that you cannot stop from smiling. And there is death and setbacks and battles that good people cannot win. But there is also this young enthusiasm that only teenagers have - regardless if what time they had been born in or if we still call them children at that point of their life. And of course there is a lot bigger plot than the stolen Priya - Peter Bantle does not practically start a war simply because one of his whores was taken away. And when it is revealed, I laughed. Not because it is impossible or funny or even unexpected if you think about it but because I did not expect it - not in the middle of a novel rooted into the Wild Wild West - this is the last place where you expect to read about the Russians plotting to get Alaska back. It fits the story, it fits the clues and some of the things happening - but it is sounds so ridiculously out of place when you see for the first time. And then it does not - and I love it when an author manages to pull one of those off and to surprise me (and you are planning to read the novel, don't read the spoiler thingie above. This novel was so much fun -- highly recommended if you read steampunk and if you do not throw away a book when love is not defined as love between a man and a woman - not that there is anything that would bother even a child - a kiss is the most that anyone does on the pages (well - besides the actual work of course but no descriptions). Not to mention just how funny Karen is (because the book is told entirely in her voice and you understand why at the end of the book) - even if she is uneducated so her tenses don't always match and her word choices can be weird but that's part of the charm.
    • 5/5
      “You ain’t gonna like what I have to tell you, but I'm gonna tell you anyway. See, my name is Karen Memery, like memory only spelt with an e, and I'm one of the girls what works in the Hôtel Mon Cherie on Amity Street. Hôtel has a little hat over the o like that. It’s French, so Beatrice tells me.”A lot of times, it’s the books that initially fly under my radar which end up impressing me the most. This was the case with Karen Memory, whose description didn’t actually appeal to me at first. After all, as much as I love steampunk, I’ve read so much of the genre that admittedly I’ve gotten a lot pickier in recent years. It’s going to take more than just airships and clockwork gadgetry to entice me these days.The moment I read the first paragraph though, I knew I was going to be in for a treat. It’s not even just the “Old West” feel of the setting (which I’m a sucker for and gets me every time) that caught my attention, but the distinct and down-to-earth voice of the narrator which immediately tugged at something in my heart. Right away, I knew I wanted to learn more about her. I wanted to get to know her and hear her story.Our protagonist Karen Memery turns out to a young “seamstress” (a euphemism those around her parts use for prostitute) working for Madame Damnable at one of Rapid City’s more upscale establishments. It’s late 19th century and the Pacific Northwest is at the height of another gold rush; like any frontier town that’s sprouted up around the mining industry, life is rough and the folks even rougher. Working girls like Karen at the Hôtel Mon Cherie know that the best way to survive is to stick together and look after one another, but not everyone is so fortunate to have an employer like Madame Damnable or friends to watch their back.The calm is shattered one night when two young women arrive at the Mon Cherie seeking help and protection. This is how Karen first meets and falls in love with Priya, a prostitute who managed to escape the horrific conditions of a rival brothel, but not without its mean and nasty proprietor Peter Bantle in hot pursuit. Thwarted, Bantle vows to make Madame Damnable and her girls’ lives a living hell, and with what appears to be mind-control device in his possession, he might be more dangerous than anyone believed. When the flogged and bloody corpses of women start appearing around town, one begins to wonder if all of this is connected somehow. A new lawman rides into town with his Comanche partner on the tail of a vicious serial killer, and together with Karen and the friends, this ragtag but resourceful crew is determined to get to the bottom of this conspiracy.At times, Karen Memory did feel very much like my perfect book. It is imaginative steampunk that feels fresh and full of life, served up as a rich blend of mystery, suspense, action and romance. The end result is difficult to describe, but delightfully easy to enjoy. As I said before, I have a weakness for westerns and stories that take place during the expansion into the western frontier, so I was charmed at once by Rapid City, resplendently brought to life by Elizabeth Bear’s evocative and vivid descriptions. Despite a healthy dose of fantastical steampunk, we never lose sight of the distinctive characteristics or nuances of this particular era.Karen herself is an amazing one-of-a-kind character, telling her story with a candidness that I found very charming. No doubt the book would not have been the same without her unique voice, but the other ladies at the Hôtel Mon Cherie surely deserve a mention too. This entire cast of brave and capable kickass women will rock your world and fill you with admiration. After Karen, I’m especially taken with the character of Madame, inspired by the real Mother Damnable, Mary Ann Conklin who ran Seattle’s first hotel and high-class brothel. For a certainty, this novel features no shortage of spirited women will go to great lengths for those they love and what they believe in, and will not back down without a fight. Karen Memory is a book about a lot of things – solving a mystery, hunting a merciless killer, saving the city from evil, and all the spectacular drama that comes along with such activities. But at its heart, the book is also about forging friendships, growing up, and chasing one’s dreams. Behind the rollicking adventure is also a softer, more introspective side to the story that will surely resonate with a lot of readers. Final verdict? I would definitely recommend this. It’s actually my first book by Elizabeth Bear, but regardless of whether you’re a long-time fan of the author or relatively new to her work like me, you really can’t go wrong with this one. Check it out.