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The Darkside Codex #3

The Glass Sealing

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Enterprising engineer Arthur Singleton is on the verge of achieving all his dreams when they are snatched away from him. His sympathies for the plight of mistreated workers lead him to speak up in their support, but for doing so he is made a scapegoat by the heads of industry, falsely accused of inciting a riot which they orchestrated to keep the people in their place. With his reputation ruined and his career in tatters, Singleton vanishes into the squalid streets of Southwatch, determined to make a difference where it really counts: in the lives of ordinary men and women, forgotten or ignored by those who live in comfort and luxury above the Dark Cloud.

Years later Singleton emerges from obscurity again as a secret leader in the Workers' Movement, an underground protest organisation dedicated to challenging the status quo--but no change comes easy, especially when it threatens the profits of the wealthy. Looking down on their activities is Jocelyn Duville, heiress to a unique airborne transportation empire, who once considered Singleton more than a colleague and was an unwitting player in his wrongful disgrace. Now a darling of high society, Jocelyn is far from a conventional figure herself, refusing to simply marry and give up her independence. She has big plans for Southwatch, a proposal that will change the face of the city and write her name in the history books in the process. But her goals epitomise everything the Workers' Movement struggles against, and they will not stand by and watch without a fight.

However, these are not the only forces at play. Street gangs, the city government, and the strange, inhuman beings that live in Southwatch's deep shadows all have vested interests in the outcome of the building conflict. Arthur Singleton and Jocelyn Duville will face off across a chasm of class, each wielding very different kinds of power--unaware that they are pitted against each other, and of the terrible consequences their actions will have on the city they both love.

213 pages, ebook

First published May 22, 2014

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About the author

Andrew Leon Hudson

21 books23 followers
Andrew Leon Hudson is a technical writer by day, and is technically a writer by night as well. An Englishman resident in Barcelona, Spain, his short fiction has been published in a variety of genre anthologies and zines, most recently in Triangulation: Dark Skies and Cossmass Infinities. He is co-author of the swashbuckling alt-hist novel Archipelago, and co-editor of the SFFWorld.com anthology series. Anything else you've heard is speculation at best. For links and news, visit AndrewLeonHudson.Wordpress.com

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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
Profile Image for Kara Babcock.
1,979 reviews1,421 followers
June 23, 2014
Disclaimer: I received this book for free from the author in exchange for a review. Loves me the free books!

So, I don’t necessarily do steampunk. I understand the appeal (I think) of speculating about what would have happened had the Victorians taken the Industrial Revolution to the next level. But I think that steampunk often runs aground, for me, as resembling too much both science fiction and fantasy. I like my science fiction scientific, with machines and strange sounds and new inventions. And I like my fantasy fantastic, with strange creatures and ineffable magical effects. I’m fine with urban fantasy, but steampunk’s mechanical-style fantasy tends to leave me cold.

Still, I’m always on the lookout for steampunk done well. Bronze Gods was such a novel; its effortless approach to steampunk-as-setting really entertained me last summer. The Glass Sealing reminds me a lot of that feeling. Like Bronze Gods, it is set in a world that is different from our own, not so much alternative history as different dimension. The steampunk nature of this world is a little more in the foreground, with a nebulous miasma known as the Dark Cloud hovering over the city of Southwatch like a malevolent London smog.

It’s worth pointing out here that Southwatch is a shared world owned by the publisher, and that Hudson’s is the third novel set in this world. None of this is evident from the book itself—it’s only after a little research that I figured this out. As far as I can tell, all the main and majority of minor characters are Hudson’s creation, and he’s just working within the bounds of the world as set out by its creators. As with steampunk, I don’t go out of my way to read shared-world stuff—I just find it uneven—but it’s hardly noticeable here.

Into this world Andrew Leon Hudson projects a plot that seems tailor-made for steampunk: workers’ rights and union struggles. If steampower and clockwork are automating all the factories, where are the jobs for labourers? I am a union man myself, being a teacher, but I also feel ambivalent about the types of workers movements portrayed here: I’m not sure I can approve of people fighting for the right to such hard and dangerous labour when it can be performed better and more safely by machines. That’s OK, though. Hudson presents perspectives on both side of the debate, and it’s interesting to see the characters change as the worker issue evolves over the course of years.

Southwatch also reminds me a little of New Crobuzon, albeit without much of the trademark Miévillesque weirdness to its denizens. It’s more traditionally human, with the notable exception of the enigmatic Skipjack, a strike-breaking robot that seems to possess consciousness, and a mysterious “fae” being that possesses power tied to the omnipresent Dark Cloud. I’m not sure how much of this is Hudson’s creation and how much is indigenous to the world, which would explain why he doesn’t go into as much detail with some of these beings as I would like. But there’s more than enough going on in Southwatch to keep a reader interested.

The story follows a basic dualistic structure between Arthur Singleton and Jocelyn Duville, with brief forays into the perspectives of other characters. I like this structure, and I like that Hudson has the story advance considerably in time so that we can watch Singleton and Jocelyn change a great deal. However, the chapters are very long—it’s a reasonably-sized novel with only about seven chapters, and while there are plenty of scene breaks within each chapter, it still makes for awkward reading in smaller chunks like I’m forced to do during the week.

These cumbersome divisions mirror the somewhat lumbering pace of the plot itself. A lot happens in The Glass Sealing … but it also seems like not that much happens at the same time. Hudson is always moving the goalposts, so just when you feel like you’ve settled into the rhythm of the book, suddenly he introduces something new that upsets the balance. This is not inherently a bad thing; it’s good for a book to keep me on my toes, keep surprising me in new ways. But I never quite felt comfortable with The Glass Sealing; reading it was always more interrogative than collaborative.

Still, the story itself is good enough that despite those issues of pace, I seldom wanted to stop reading or put the book down. Hudson makes me care about the plight of the citizens of Southwatch, and he deftly mines the class and social mobility issues of Victorian England for a sturdy social backdrop to the story. I simultaneously wanted Jocelyn to succeed and to fail: she is a protagonist and an antagonist, depending on one’s point of view. Her idea of the ceiling/sealing (hah) is just so phenomenally bad for the majority of people in Southwatch, and the fact that no one in her sphere of influence even voices that opinion shows how far gone the elite are in terms of their relationship with the lower class.

The moral ambiguity and shades of grey in this book are its most intriguing quality. Just as Jocelyn’s goals are not exactly laudable, Singleton’s own actions leave much to be desired. His experience with the fae leaves him … messianic. And so his new role as leader of a strange, cult-like worker’s revolution is bad news. Hence, Hudson has a talent for creating conflict and stoking the fires ever so gradually until they lead to an unstoppable and terrifying conflagration of a climax.

The Glass Sealing is a good first novel. It’s a story with a powerful central struggle and characters who are not so much at odds as they are at acute angles. Southwatch is a city where everyone has their own interests at heart, but those interests are shaped and warped by an upbringing heavily influenced by the level where one has grown up. Into this society, Hudson projects a powerful plot in which characters conspire to break the chains of their class or leave their mark on the city’s history.

It’s not going to change your mind about steampunk. I’m not finding myself in urgent need of another steampunk infusion; I’m not even all that enthusiastic about checking out more of the Darkside Codex. But that’s OK—The Glass Sealing works as a standalone novel. I’d be interested to see what Hudson has planned next, whether it’s something else in this world or a world of his own. While The Glass Sealing doesn’t exactly break many barriers or expand many boundaries in terms of genre or quality, it does showcase the possibilities of a fertile imagination combined with a well-structured world.

Creative Commons BY-NC License
Profile Image for Rebecca.
1,215 reviews110 followers
June 18, 2014
Disclosure: I was sent a review copy of this book.

As a genre, steampunk is dedicated to setting, and it's on the basis of setting that a steampunk novel will fly or fail. That's not to say that plot and character are unimportant; but it's the setting that sets the book apart.

The Glass Sealing has magnificent descriptions, some of them breathtaking. The image of a gyrocopter plunging through a corrosive cloud, delicate towers glittering in the sunset, a woman walking along an arc of glass so reflective she seems to be standing on sky--Hudson can set a scene very effectively.

But it's the whys of the world that never quite clicked for me. The Dark Cloud, for example; I seem to have missed its origins. It's established that others have tried to remove the poison. But where it came from is important. Is it naturally occurring? If so, why do the inhabitants of the city stay here? Why not move the city? Is it manmade? Does that mean it's going to get worse, or is it the terrible ramifications of a one time event? (Again, why not move the city?) It's the driving force of the novel, but the lack of clarity on the Macguffin makes the plot and motivations of the characters murky.

More problematic is the sudden introduction, two thirds of the way through, of the supernatural. Perhaps a few hints were dropped, but certainly not enough. The first chunk of the book presents itself as alternate science, but then abruptly we're introduced to magic. Again, the lack of clarity makes the motivations of the characters rather opaque. Singleton encounters the magic and is essentially erased as a protagonist, becoming more of a plot device than anything else. What exactly his goals are and what the limitations of his powers might be are never made clear.

Finally, there are the intelligent automatons. It's a bit of a wasted opportunity--when first introduced, they are fascinating. But then they disappear completely and only return, somewhat unexpectedly, in the climax. The problem is that most of the book's conflict revolves around the Industrial Revolution (and modern day) dilemma of automation versus human effort. For most of the book, we pit dumb but efficient machines against flexible, feeling, mistake-making humans. The existence of self-aware automatons undermines this argument and turns it into something else entirely. But the automatons seem to exist only to add drama, with no explanation of why more of them could not be built to remove the workers completely.

There's a lot to like here--shadowy conspiracies, a hyper-competent female protagonist, airship pirates. But the conspiracies never really accomplish anything, the protagonist is undermined without really learning anything, and the airship pirates disappear almost immediately after their introduction. There are a lot of fun puzzle pieces, but they never quite seem to fit together.
Profile Image for Mina Villalobos.
133 reviews23 followers
December 29, 2014
I feel like this book is a nice introduction to the universe it is set on, giving you insights and glimpses of the kind of world it is, the life they have, and what can you encounter in it. In a way, it deviates from what I am used to find in steam punk, encountering creatures that seem to belong to other genres, but I think that those surprises make the world richer and more interesting.

The narrative is very breezy and is easy to fall into step with it, and the characters begin quite naive and young and grow older and darker as the book progresses. The feeling of foreboding about the future of these people you are reading about becomes rather personal if you have felt that way about your life as well -that is, the nostalgia of youth, the dread of what lies ahead, the fear of how you might be less than what you thought you would be, who you might become and what would your young you think of that person.

I feel like the actual plot of the story takes a while to start, though in a way the main conflict feels more like an excuse to explore the world and the characters. The world, though, ends up being the biggest of the characters, the most striking one, perhaps because you can feel it's arc is only starting.
Profile Image for N.E. White.
Author 9 books28 followers
June 26, 2014
I've been meaning to do a proper review for this, but time keeps escaping me, so I'll just offer some brief thoughts:

Disclaimer: Andrew is a friend and I read this novel prior to publication. Some things may have changed.

The story in The Glass Sealing follows two characters; one a determined daughter of a successful business man and the other an up-and-coming engineer. For a brief moment in time, together they think they have the answers that will fix their city, but events conspire against them and each must face decisions that will wreck havoc on everyone around them.

I really liked the setting in this novel. Part of a shared world series I haven't read, I enjoyed the way Mr. Hudson described the city's inhabitants, the mysterious black cloud, and the airships that ruled the skies. And I especially like the complex way all of them interacted not only with each other, but with our two protagonists. Arthur (our engineer) and Jocelyn (our ruthless businesswoman) are surprising characters. Each offering reasons to follow them on their plight and each will have you questioning early assumptions about them.

As with many tales, a story is only as good as its ending. While I liked the big showdown between Arthur and the city, the resolution for both characters didn't resonate with me. Regardless, this is a good read and I look forward to more novels from Mr. Hudson.

Profile Image for Dan Glaser.
Author 1 book16 followers
October 31, 2014
While this delightfully steampunk novel is listed as the third book in The Darkside Codex series (a shared world between several authors), rest assured that "The Glass Sealing" is a standalone work that is begging to be read. Set in the town of Southwatch, the poor and oppressed lower classes labor beneath a toxic Dark Cloud, while the wealthy and elite few live opulent lives far above the spreading smog. The novel is rich in its portrayal of both its characters and surroundings, and would have solicited a 5 star review from me were I more a fan of the Victorian stylings of the tale. That is not to say that the novel isn't styled well--for fans of "The Difference Engine" and other such steampunk works, you will be thrilled by the language and the prose employed by the author. I, however, tend to prefer my retro-futurism more diesel than steam (i.e. 1920s-50s, rather than turn-of-the-century), and find Victoriana to be a tad stuffy for my own liking. Although, however you take your fiction, "The Glass Sealing" is a steampunk class struggle with bold vision and strong personalities that are sure to engage, delight, and thrill readers of all creeds and genres. A highly recommended breakout novel, which has me excited to read more from Hudson in the future.
October 30, 2014
I am not an aficionado of steampunk normally but the quality of the descriptions in Hudson´s book and the relentless pace drew me in. Call it Pride and Prejudice a lá Isaac Asimov with a with a class struggle thrown in. Hudson has done an outstanding job of creating unique environment within the steampunk mileau.
2 reviews12 followers
June 1, 2014
A Steam engine of a read, great pace and diversity of characters. The social reform undertones are nicely handled and the ending a surprise. Four starts.
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