Sometime last year, i can't remember when, i started reading this book called The Emperor's Edge. I completely fell in love with it. And as the books came out i continued to read them. After roughly 2 years of reading them my wonderful author finished the series. Well at some point in the middle of the series i realized that i am just head over heels in love with steampunk. I had no idea that i liked it so much. I found out around the end of last year or the beginning of this year that this amazing author had 2 other series out that i had not read. So i go and buy all of them i can find on the kindle and read them! I can't really say that i have found an author that i just absolutely love to the point where I'll buy anything she writes...but i now think that i have. Lindsay Buroker is probably my favorite author at the moment and it makes me sad that The Emperor's Edge series is over. I'm hoping and praying that she will write more with the main characters from the series because well i love me some dark emotionless assassin...for some reason he makes me crazy. And i know I'm not the only one that is in love with such a bland personality, but in all fairness its not his fault, he did kind of grow up having to shut all those emotions down.
Alright now that I'm done rambling about that amazing character i would like to move on to what this post is ACTUALLY about...which is steampunk, with a little bit of Lindsay's finest :P.
Everywhere i go i always find something that reminds me of steampunk. It could the the color and style of a shirt, the little battery powered toy that rolls across the floor, etc. Hell i went Halloween costume shopping online and i wasn't even looking for steampunk costumes...but there they were the cutest shoes i have every seen...it took everything i had not to whip out my card and buy them right there...in fact i have a picture of these wonderful shoes that got me on a steampunk costume hunt!
These 4 inch heels are only $42.99 on buycostumes.com. They would so look good with black and brown vertical striped pants, a brown open bust tailcoat (or black depending on your style), aviator beanie hat, and a black shirt of your choice. And you can't forget the AWESOME accessories to go with that! I could name off tons of things, but i think I'll leave that to your imagination :P.
If you look up steampunk on wikipedia you get a whole lot of information saying pretty much the same things...so I'll break it down. Steampunk is a type of science fiction that revolves around dirigibles, steam powered engines, crazy inventions that probably shouldn't work but do anyways because that is the will of the mind, and other very interesting things. The first time a story was classified as steampunk was back in the 1980's, but if we look at our own history it actually goes back a lot farther almost 4 decades before the works of K. W. Jeter ( i have yet to read his writings, but i am interested and may very well have to look into those...hopefully they are still out there in bookstores). He actually came up with the idea of steampunk in a letter he wrote in 1987. Just reading through all the information on that page makes me feel like I'm trying to write a report for school again. Maybe if i did write a report about steampunk in high school i wouldn't have failed my sophomore year of English >.<.
So what is steampunk to me? Well its a mixture of a lot of things really. It's hard for me to read a story that actually takes place in our world and it have magick or something fantasy in it at all. I'm so used to reading about all that stuff taking place in a different setting so to speak. But i have read a few books that took place here that were science fiction that i really liked. So pretty much for me to get into a steampunk book it has to take place someplace totally different so i can imagine the place and not try and base it off real things that i have seen or could see on the internet, Lindsay Buroker's Flash Gold series is a totally different story!!
This seems to be the only steampunk book that takes place in our world that i can read. I have not been able to find another author that can write quite like she does. I guess it does help that it takes place in the Yukon :P.
So i asked Lindsay and Nicole MacDonald (author of the BirthRight Trilogy) pretty much their thoughts about steampunk and this is the responses that i got from both of them:
My question to Lindsay Buroker:
“i'm writing a post on my blog about steampunk and since i
adore your steampunk novels i was wondering if you had any comments or thoughts
on the whole genre?”
Her Reply:
“Gosh, I haven't read much of it. Should I confess to
that? I just write stories and let other
people categorize them. But with steampunk, I enjoy the quirky
go-against-the-flow heroes and heroines, along with all the fun machines and
gadgets that never were but might have been.”
My question to Nicole MacDonald:
“i'm writing a post on my blog about steampunk and since i
know you want to get into writing steampunk books i was wondering you had any
comments or ideas or well anything about the whole genre that i could add?”
Her Reply:
“What SteamPunk is to me
I have to confess, I’ve never read any ‘intentional’
steampunk books. I have read many gothic tales and quite a few authors who
wrote in the Victorian era, but never a Victorian inspired steampunk novel.
I do, however, want to write steampunk, thanks to an amazing
dream I had almost a year ago. That dream had a flying machine and other
creations that blew me away and the vividness of the colors still haven’t left
me. I continue to avoid reading steampunk for that very reason, because I want
my own take on it, and I think at the heart that’s what steampunk is all about. About creation, adventure, and a style from
bygone days recreated for a modern view. There are no absolute rules with
steampunk other than machinery of some sort and a hint of the Victorian age.
This gives an author so much room to play with. It can be fantasy based on
realism or realism based on fantasy. The lack of rules allows multiple takes on
a genre so that the scope feels almost endless; mystery, romance, adventure,
thriller, dystopian, fantasy – add anything you like to the mix. Steampunk on a
certain level is the perfect genre for any writer (or reader) who likes
something a little bit different, with an edge (occasionally sooty) of glamour."
And i completely agree with both of them. I would have asked more authors their take on the genre but i haven't read that many just yet. Lindsay did just put out another book called Torrent and its about a modern day archaeologist turned treasure hunter who gets herself in the middle of a fantasy world so to speak. I almost pretty much posted a review about the book here, but since this is about steampunk i think I'll save that for another posting :P.
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