The Lazarus Machine

Today’s post is on The Lazarus Machine: A Tweed & Nightingale Adventure” by Paul Crilley. It is the first novel in a new series. It is published by Pyr Publishing and is 261 pages long. The cover has the two main characters with a green and silver machine and man in gas masks behind them. The intended reader is young adult but anyone who likes Steampunk and fast paced adventures will enjoy this book. There is no language, no sex, but the violence is not too bad and there is no gore. It is told in third person close moving from Tweed to Nightingale. There Be Spoilers Ahead.

From the dust jacket- An alternate 1895…A world where Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace perfected the Difference Engine. Where steam and Tesla powered computers are everywhere. Where automatons powered by human souls venture out into the sprawling London streets. Where the Ministry, a secretive government agency, seeks to control everything in the name of the Queen.
It is in this claustrophobic, paranoid city that seventeen-year-old Sebastian Tweed and his conman father struggle to eke out a living.
But all is not well…
A murderous, masked gang has moved into London, spreading terror through the criminal ranks as it takes over the underworld. As the gang carves up more and more of the city, a single name comes to be uttered in fearful whispers.
Professor Moriarty.
When Tweed’s father is kidnapped by Moriarty, Tweed is forced to team up with an information broker Octavia Nightingale to track him down. But he soon realizes that his father’s disappearance is just a tiny piece of a political conspiracy that could destroy the British Empire and plunge the world into a horrific war.

Review- I loved this book. It was fun, fast paced, and with interesting characters. This is the first YA for the author but he is a good writer so it does not matter. Now as I am an experienced reader so I saw some of the twists coming but that did not bother me and I think that if you are younger, like YA, you may not see them coming. The way that Crilley world builds is fantastic. For example: Tweed and Nightingale are running down an alley, he creates them, their clothes, their emotions, etc. Then they look up and he builds the alley, the shadows, the sounds around them. I truly enjoyed reading this book. This is going on my to be bought list. The only thing that I would like Crilley to change is that I do not think that he does not use Nightingale to her best. I found her so interesting I wanted more with her and about her. But other than that this is a great read and I am looking forward to the next book which he is working on.

I give this book Five out if Five stars. I get nothing for my review and I borrowed this book from my local library but I will be buying this one.