Heart of Veridon The Burn Cycle Book 1 eBook Tim Akers
Download As PDF : Heart of Veridon The Burn Cycle Book 1 eBook Tim Akers 
The first novel in Tim Akers’ captivating steampunk-noir series, The Burn Cycle.
Captain-turned-criminal Jacob Burn is the unlikely survivor of two zepliner crashes. The first destroyed his career as a pilot, disgracing his nobleman father and ending his life of privilege. But the second threatens to destroy Burn’s whole world—Veridon, an ancient terraced city reborn through The Church of the Algorithm’s recent advances in mechanics, technology, and cog-work.
Moments before the Glory of Day wrecked, a former underworld associate of Burn’s handed him an unusual and complicated cog for safekeeping. But the artifact-cog quickly draws Burn unwanted attention—too much of it, from too many of Veridon’s most powerful factions, casting doubt on even his closest allies.
A far more dangerous and unpredictable enemy has also joined the manhunt, carving a bloody trail across the city, while Burn’s frantic search for answers only leads to more questions. At the heart of it all, the mysterious cog, which hides a secret potent enough to shake Veridon to its very core, and recast Burn’s entire existence.
Heart of Veridon The Burn Cycle Book 1 eBook Tim Akers
This is a novel written by the formula, by the numbers, by the writers workshop textbooks. Each sequence, almost every scene, ends in a disaster more dire than the one before...hard core workshop formula. And then we have the disinherited knight cliche, and the hard boiled, rugged individual who is imprisoned by this own narcissistic illusion of honor cliche, and the whore with the heart of gold cliche, and the strange, marginally comical, side-kick cliche, and the contentious father/son relationship cliche, and the MacGuffin plot device (a la The Maltese Falcon, R2-D2, Lebowski's rug, the One Ring, etc) cliche, and the literal deux ex machina cliche that keeps the two-dimensional, Wolverinesque protagonist alive through the first violent disaster, through the next more dire violent disaster, through the next much more dire violent disaster, again and again and again until all this great flood of disasters become stultifying, boring to the extreme. And we have the cliche plot point where the winsome, lovely and loyal love interest buys the farm in the last chapter which would not be a plot point in a stand alone novel, but the leading plot point for a series.Another part of this novel's problem is the overwrought world building that inserts vague, indistinct and repetitive clockwork descriptions into almost every paragraph...yeah, yeah, yeah, we got the full picture of the place by the third chapter. We read the word "cog" at least once in every narrative paragraph, but there is no artistry here, no talent for description. The McGuffin is called (of course) 'the Cog" but there is not one satisfying description of it or any of the other clockworks for that matter.
And finally, the action scenes of fight and flight get bogged down in descriptions that are more like what comes from a middle-ground point of view by a third person narrator than a first person participant, slow-mo. I quit reading out of boredom about 3/4 of the way through, jumped ahead, skimmed the ending and that was that.
Product details
|
Tags : Heart of Veridon (The Burn Cycle Book 1) - Kindle edition by Tim Akers. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading Heart of Veridon (The Burn Cycle Book 1).,ebook,Tim Akers,Heart of Veridon (The Burn Cycle Book 1),Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc,FICTION Science Fiction Steampunk
People also read other books :
- A Vampire Forsaken Male Male Gay Vampire BDSM Romantic Suspense Kansas City Vampires Book 2 edition by GR George Literature Fiction eBooks
- Mr Standfast John Buchan 9781542337151 Books
- Hot Rail to Hell Conversant USA Book 1 edition by Robert E Vardeman Literature Fiction eBooks
- Mr Hawkins' Humorous Adventures Edgar Franklin 9781407647777 Books
- Creampied Hotties 4 While my Family Sleeps edition by Natalia Darque Literature Fiction eBooks
Heart of Veridon The Burn Cycle Book 1 eBook Tim Akers Reviews
Tim Akers' The Heart of Veridon ( Solaris 2009) is a mix of fantasy, noir, science fiction, and punk; a novel situated in a strange and unique world, told in the first person, by a cog-works creature named Jacob Burn, whose claim to fame initially is that he has crashed in not one but two zepliners and lived to tell the tale. Burn, an ex-pilot, a graduate of the Academy, works as an enforcer for a shady crime syndicate and is personally managed by a beautiful hooker named Emily, who may or not be a double agent. The novel begins en medias res; a zepliner is in flames and falls into the Reine, a river of some importance, inhabited by unique creatures, the Fehn. The Fehn, although not fully described, are important to the plot, because they, along with the anansi, are indigenous to the world and provide the novel with some of its internal weirdness, especially when juxtaposed against the humans, who seem to be relatively newcomers to the world.
These comparisons and conclusions are not clear because we learn of things through conversation. Uncertainty, however, is not detrimental to the novel's plot or success; instead, I would argue it is one of the novel's strengths Akers builds his universe slowly, parceling out details of his weird world incrementally, along with the development of the plot. His stylistic choice works because it is consistent with its noir antecedents. The plot takes its energy and impetus from the novels of Hammett and Chandler and first person point-of-view. The result is that these choices create both tension and expectation. Imagine, a half-man, half machine Marlowe in a weird, fantastic world conducting one of his convoluted investigations. And, consistent with noir, further imagine our (somewhat unreliable) narrator wise-cracking and skylarking his way through a brutal and dangerous plot that involves a conflict between two religions and a marauding cogs-work angel. It is this religious struggle that provides the plot's internal complexity and intimates a rich, created world, not yet fully disclosed and the existence of some more serious themes that are not immediately apparent.
First, like Matthew Hughes's The Damned Busters(Angry Robot Books 2011) that I reviewed a couple of weeks ago, The Heart of Veridon foregrounds religion. In Akers' novel, two religions, diametrically opposed to each other, vie for control of the city. Within the conflict, technology plays a major role, transforming men into machines. Second, Jacob Burn is an outcast from his class and his family; a member of the aristocracy who works with the criminal element of the city. A father/son conflict is obvious, which adds a further complexity to the novel. Third, there is a game-like quality to the novel. Like a game, part of the pleasure of the plot arises from the ability to explore, to discover new and unique wonders. One of the major plot devices is the discovery of a map, which illuminates another sector of the unknown world and promises further discoveries, new creatures, and more weirdness. Fourth, like most new weird, the city, its structure and its politics function as theme. Veridon is not only socially nuanced and class-burdened, it is virtually multi-layered. Throughout the story we travel from the sewers to the Tower, meeting different types of citizens and creatures. The polis theme complements the game-theme and situates the novel squarely within the sub-genre of new weird.
Heart of Veridon is a controlled work consistent in theme, voice, and tone. Akers does not overreach himself; he holds back, saving more surprises for further books. Nevertheless, this novel stands on its own. All and all it is a very entertaining read.
This is a novel written by the formula, by the numbers, by the writers workshop textbooks. Each sequence, almost every scene, ends in a disaster more dire than the one before...hard core workshop formula. And then we have the disinherited knight cliche, and the hard boiled, rugged individual who is imprisoned by this own narcissistic illusion of honor cliche, and the whore with the heart of gold cliche, and the strange, marginally comical, side-kick cliche, and the contentious father/son relationship cliche, and the MacGuffin plot device (a la The Maltese Falcon, R2-D2, Lebowski's rug, the One Ring, etc) cliche, and the literal deux ex machina cliche that keeps the two-dimensional, Wolverinesque protagonist alive through the first violent disaster, through the next more dire violent disaster, through the next much more dire violent disaster, again and again and again until all this great flood of disasters become stultifying, boring to the extreme. And we have the cliche plot point where the winsome, lovely and loyal love interest buys the farm in the last chapter which would not be a plot point in a stand alone novel, but the leading plot point for a series.
Another part of this novel's problem is the overwrought world building that inserts vague, indistinct and repetitive clockwork descriptions into almost every paragraph...yeah, yeah, yeah, we got the full picture of the place by the third chapter. We read the word "cog" at least once in every narrative paragraph, but there is no artistry here, no talent for description. The McGuffin is called (of course) 'the Cog" but there is not one satisfying description of it or any of the other clockworks for that matter.
And finally, the action scenes of fight and flight get bogged down in descriptions that are more like what comes from a middle-ground point of view by a third person narrator than a first person participant, slow-mo. I quit reading out of boredom about 3/4 of the way through, jumped ahead, skimmed the ending and that was that.
0 Response to "[QEB]⇒ Download Gratis Heart of Veridon The Burn Cycle Book 1 eBook Tim Akers"
Post a Comment