Gideon Smith and the Mask of the Ripper, by David Barnett

This week I'm reviewing the third full-length novel in the Gideon Smith series, Gideon Smith and the Mask of the Ripper. And I'm going to begin by saying I did not like this book and at one point I became so frustrated and horrified with it that I threw it against the wall. As my readers might remember, I have done this before with another book, albeit for slightly different reasons. However in both cases I felt extremely justified and I'm sure there are other books I've talked about on this blog that have deserved the same treatment.

I'll begin by getting the least-broken bits out of the way. The plot of this novel, opposed to being the globe-trotting adventures we've followed Gideon on before, is confined to the city of London, which proves to be equally capable of giving our intrepid young hero plenty of work to do. The rampage of Jack the Ripper has been going unchecked for over two years and the people of London want something to be done. Gideon and his companions Maria and Aloysius Bent plan to provide aid to the Metropolitan Police to bring this fiend to justice. However, things go awry when Gideon's memory gets erased and disappears into London's underbelly. Meanwhile their good friend, airship pilot Rowena Fanshawe is accused of murder and is in very real danger of being executed. It's up to Bent and Maria to find Gideon and save the day before time runs out.

Overall the main points of the plot are okay. You really have two or three separate plots that sort of intersect at various points but really could be their own story given adequate space and development. Regardless, it makes a very interesting story and you get a strong sense of adventure. I will say for me personally the plot device of Gideon losing his memory feels somewhat hackneyed because it feels like an excuse to get Gideon out of the way so Bent and Maria actually have something to do instead of follow Gideon around. It does lead to some depth of Gideon's character, but I still felt like it could have done better. There's also the creation of an entirely unnecessary love triangle just to mess with Gideon and Maria's relationship, but that's neither here nor there.

The biggest problem I had with this book was its treatment of women. This is something I've kind of noticed in other books and in my review of Gideon Smith and the Brass Dragon I lamented the fact Maria spent most of her time as little more than a sexy lamp, as well as really focusing on the fact Annie Crook had been a prostitute. Which felt like a shame because I could see Barnett write well-developed female characters in the same novel. Unfortunately this book takes the bad parts and makes them worse for no good reason.

At the very beginning we discover that the prostitutes of Whitechapel, frustrated by the police's inability to do anything about Jack the Ripper, declare a strike until the police manage to apprehend the killer. And in a way this makes sense. The prostitutes are seen as expendable and as long as Jack the Ripper continues to only kill undesirables, the police don't have a terribly pressing great desire to put in an effort. So really they're acting in their own best interests. However, the police are immediately concerned by this strike because they believe it's only a matter of time before Whitechapel and the entire East End of London will break into riots because the lower classes can't release their energy with sex so they'll resort to violence.

Let's take a minute to talk about how messed up that is. First of all, it plays into this assumption that men are basically little more than giant Ids and if we can't get our jollies in one way, we'll resort to another. Because apparently we men are all psychotic apes with absolutely no self-control whatsoever and will do anything if you dangle sex in front of us. This is a rather harmful stereotype that only perpetuates this "Boys will be boys" attitude which condones a certain amount of violence, physical, emotional, and sexual from men when it shouldn't be tolerated at all. However, there's also the very unfortunate implication that the ensuing violence caused by these beast-men is the prostitutes' fault because they're on strike. Which is a classic case of victim blaming: This violence that has happened against you and your friends is your fault because you wouldn't have sex with the men who committed it, thus leading them to violence. That's a pretty messed up message and while Barnett may not have meant it that way, that's certainly how it came across to me. And this is within the first sixty pages of the book as well.

However, there's something far, far worse than blaming women for being the cause of violence because they're not serving as a sexual release valve. Poor, poor Rowena Fanshawe falls victim to a trope I detest with an absolute passion: strong women are only strong because they were the victims of sexual violence in the past. (Sorry, I don't know if there's a concise way of saying that other than Strong Independent Woman TM, but let me explain.)

There is an unfortunate trend in fiction, which became very prominent in the 1990's and has never really gone away, where you have a female character who is well developed as a character. However, usually this follows a pattern of a woman who's tough, doesn't follow society's conventions, and is determined to do things her own way. This may manifest in a variety of ways, but in more action-oriented series it tends to result in her being a competent fighter, or in other series being very, very competent at what she does. Unfortunately, the motivation behind her being the best at what she does is almost inevitably because she was the victim of some form of sexual violence in her past.

This is a problematic trope for a number of reasons. First of all it greatly cheapens the traumatic experience of sexual violence that far too many women suffer today and can cause long-lasting mental and emotional problems that can severely affect them for the rest of their lives. Sexual violence is a serious issue and needs to be talked about in a responsible manner. But having "strong female characters" be the victims of sexual violence isn't the appropriate way to handle this.

Secondly, it creates this stereotype that the only motivation a woman can have to become the best at whatever she does is because she was the victim of sexual violence in her past. And that's incredibly limiting for female characters, forcing all of them into the same box when they really don't need a tragic past of sexual violence to provide them motivation. Male characters have, for centuries, had a variety of different motivations to do the things that they do, and sometimes they don't have motivation beyond just wanting to be the very best at what they do. And in some cases, making your female character a victim of sexual violence is completely unnecessary. As I talked about in my review of On Basilisk Station, Honor already had plenty of reasons to hate Pavel Young: he was a vain, spoiled aristocrat who was getting shunted onto the fast track for promotion because of his family connections rather than any actual ability. Adding sexual violence to that mix just felt unnecessary and incredibly unfortunate.

So to return to Mask of the Ripper, in this case it is poor Rowena who falls prey to this trope which I hate with a passion. As you may remember in my previous reviews I actually liked Rowena as a character. She's a fairly standard steampunk character, the woman who doesn't abide by society's standards and is involved in something not seen as traditionally ''feminine'' in this case, being an airship pilot. In addition Rowena doesn't mind bedding a hot guy when she gets the chance because airship pilots have a very good chance of dying young so she takes her pleasures when she can. All of this was well and fine and I thought she was a very well-written character. Unfortunately in this novel we learn that Rowena's motivation for becoming the woman we all know and love is because she was the victim of sexual abuse in her past. And this is completely unnecessary because of what else we learn about her in this book.

We learn that Rowena is actually the daughter of a famous airship pilot who actually went missing in the Indian Ocean some twenty years ago. Her mother ended up marrying a rather lackluster businessman who relies on Rowena's mother's fortune to keep his enterprises solvent rather than his actual ability. Rowena does not care for this at all and eventually runs away from home to become an airship pilot. Barnett could have done all of this without the sexual abuse and that would have been a perfectly fine backstory for her, wishing to rebel against her failure of a stepfather and take up her father's profession. In fact, if Rowena was a male character, she probably would have had the same backstory, but without the sexual abuse. But because she's a woman we have this added extra, and extremely unfortunate element.

So overall, this book is really bad. There are some interesting bits but due to how it treats women I ended up throwing the book at the wall. I'm willing to give Barnett the benefit of the doubt and say maybe he didn't intend for it to come across that way, but it only illustrates how insidious these tropes have become and why we need to point them out, challenge them, and try to correct them wherever we go. I would not recommend people read this book and I think I can safely say I'll be stopping this series after this book.

- Kalpar

Gideon Smith and the Brass Dragon, by David Barnett

Okay, everybody, as promised last week, this is the first review of Kalpar's Steampunk Month....three weeks. Whatever. And we begin with the book responsible for this little diversion: Gideon Smith and the Brass Dragon. Some of my long-time readers may remember that about a year ago I reviewed a book titled Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl, the first book in what I'm now calling the Gideon Smith Adventures. Anyway, the first book ended with quite a few loose ends and I was at the time uncertain if the series was going to continue or if this was meant to be a continuing adventure sort of thing. Fortuitously, while perusing a book store some time ago I came across the book I'm reviewing today, which is the second installment. And thanks to me finally deciding to go look it up, it appears that a third book Gideon Smith and the Mask of the Ripper is scheduled to come out later this year. But, first thing's first, let's talk about Brass Dragons.

Attention Dear and Gentle Readers, due to the serial nature of these books spoilers are a tragic necessity of this review. However, I shall endeavor to keep them to a minimum.

At the end of the last book the clockwork girl Maria and the brass dragon Apep had been stolen and taken across the Atlantic ocean to America. After a brief respite Gideon Smith, the new Hero of the Empire, has been tasked by the Crown to retrieve both and ensure the safety of the Empire. Gideon's adventures take him to the skyscrapers of New York, the plains of Texas, and the hills of California, with plenty of adventures and challenges along the way. And a fantastic cast of supporting characters and cameos come along as well, ensuring there isn't a dull moment. Rowena Fanshawe, the fabled Belle of the Airways, Louis Cockayne, Yankee gunman and scoundrel, and Aloysious Bent, journalist of dubious utility. Throw in a steam-powered cyborg Charles Darwin, a very angry Tyrannosaurus rex, a Zorro expy known as El Chupacabra, and, I kid you not, a Japanese steampunk mecha, and I don't know whether to be mad at Barnett for throwing every trope he can in there or applaud at the sheer audacity.

This book manages to be another fantastic, fun, and exciting pulp adventure. And as anyone who's read this blog long enough can attest, I am an absolute sucker for pulp adventures. Especially when the title is in the format of Main Character and X. I know I said in my review of the first book that I had been a little frustrated with all the references and characters thrown into the story, but on rereading it I found I actually kind of liked it. Sort of like Barnett took a bunch of nerdy awesome things and put them together to create a new, bigger, awesome thing. I did feel towards the end that there was so much stuff thrown into this book that a lot of it really wasn't as developed as well as I would have liked, but that's not really my main problem with this book. And believe me, I have a problem.

As I mentioned in my review of the previous book, albeit sort of in an obscure fashion, was that Maria suffered from some really bad vaguely sexist tropes. Specifically Maria made a really big deal, at least in her internal monologue, about how she had occasionally been a prostitute in her past life. It had bothered me that there had been a lot of emphasis on that specifically, when our glimpse of Maria's past life showed she had really only done it from time to time when she was a few shillings short for the rent that month. And honestly, can we judge someone doing what the can to get by? My point is, in Maria's past life she had been a shopgirl who occasionally slept with people for money because she's got to pay rent. No big deal. In the second book almost every description of Maria's past life was, "She was a prostitute. Oh. And also a shopgirl. But totally a prostitute." Obviously not in those words, but it seemed like Barnett had some weird fixation on prostitution or something. The fact that Steamtown, one of the main locations in this novel, has a very large prostitution industry does not help my concern as well.

In addition, Maria spends a lot of the book as little more than a "Sexy Lamp". For my readers unfamiliar with the term, "Sexy Lamp" is used to refer to a female character in a work who is so irrelevant that she does nothing to affect the plot beyond perhaps being something for the male characters to fight over, that she could be replaced with a sexy lamp and the story wouldn't change at all. I actually calculated this and Maria spends precisely 64% of the book unconscious, doing absolutely nothing. Nearly two-thirds of the book she could be replaced with a sexy lamp and nothing would change. And in the remaining third of the book she just doesn't get a lot of development as a character. There's her love story with Gideon, but that also feels poorly developed and I found myself wondering why they were in love with each other. In the first book they really only spend a few scenes together and a lot of it is Gideon being awkward about her being made of gears and pistons instead of flesh and blood. It's almost as if the plot is saying "Hey. These two belong together. I HAVE DECREED IT!" And with Maria spending two-thirds of the book as a sexy lamps does absolutely nothing to help develop their love story. It just feels forced.

And the reason I take such issue with all of these sexist tropes tied to and floating around Maria is because I know, I know Barnett can write strong female characters because he has three between the two books! You've got Countess Elizabeth Bathory, a charming yet powerful vampire, determined to avenge the death of her husband, Dracula. Rowena Fanshawe, a gutsy airship pilot who doesn't let herself be restrained by other people's expectations of how a woman's supposed to act and embraces the freedom that the sky brings. And in the new book Inez Batiste Palomo, a rapier wielding Spaniard determined to defend her home and inspire her people. I will admit that all three of these kind of fall under the Action Girl trope, but I'm actually kind of okay with that because these books are pulp adventures and so almost everybody gets in on the action. Just stands to reason. So it just makes you wonder why, why on earth is Maria so poorly developed? The disparity between her and the other characters is so pronounced that it really bothers me. Maybe Maria will get more development in later books, but I really can't say that right now.

My only other complaint, and that's because I'm someone who looks at maps, is the blatant errors of geography made on the map of the United States in the front of this book. San Antonio, Nuevo Laredo, and New Orleans are precisely where they're supposed to be. However, San Francisco (which is now Nyu Edo) which is explicitly to be stated where it is in real life, is suddenly a hundred miles north of where it should be. The worst offense, though, is New York City suddenly appearing on the coast of North Carolina. And the book says New York is located on the island of Manhattan. Which last I checked was located in New York State, a good five hundred miles north. Listen, I hate to be utterly pedantic about this since I really like maps, but this is really basic geography that can easily be researched. And no, I will not stop complaining about it.

I did like this book, I really did. Although the sheer abundance of tropes and references did make me want to alternately congratulate or slap Barnett. I just got really frustrated with Maria being such a poorly developed character, compared to practically anyone else in the cast. I would suggest any fans of pulp adventures read this book, though. Despite its flaws.

- Kalpar

Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl, by David Barnett

This week we're looking at a new-ish steampunk adventure novel, Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl. Overall I am of mixed opinions regarding this book. On the one hand I found it to be an entertaining pulp adventure, which is a favorite genre of mine, and I was quite satisfied with the adventure. On the other hand, there were some very strong frustrations I had with this novel which greatly diminished my enjoyment. Good parts and bad parts balanced against each other I'd give the book an average rating, but I still feel conflicted.

The premise of this novel is that in 1890 the British Empire, ruled by Queen Victoria, controls much of the world with its massive air fleet and mechanical marvels. It even includes parts of North America, which have remained in British control since the failed revolution of 1775, although several other powers such as France, Spain, and Japan have all staked out spheres of influence. Defending this ever-expanding empire is the glorious hero, Captain Lucian Trigger, and his band of colorful companions who go on rollicking adventures to protect the empire and vanquish its foes. 

Gideon Smith is young fisherman in a village of coastal England, but his dreams of a greater life are fueled by tales of Captain Trigger's adventures. When the crew of his father's fishing boat go missing, Gideon suspects foul play and heads for London to seek the aid of his hero, meeting a number of interesting characters along the way. Gideon is soon thrust into events well over his head and finds himself engaged in his own adventure.

Overall the premise is very solid. Drawing very heavily on pulp adventures and utilizing an everyman perspective character, Barnett sets us up for a grand adventure and he certainly delivers. What is most frustrating for me is that while Barnett creates great possibilities for exploring a very different political and social landscape of America, almost all the action occurs in England where the political fabric remains the same. In a world of grand adventure, most of the action takes place in an area fairly familiar to any reader of nineteenth century literature. Yes, there are new technological marvels galore, with dirigibles and steam driven cabs in the hive of London, but politically it remains the same. When this world seems very closely related to our own, it would have been a great opportunity to see how this very different technology could have affected Britain's social, political, and economic fabric. 

The reason I say that this world seems so closely related to our own was the prevalence of certain historical characters that either served a major part in the plot or were tangentially mentioned. The historical figures of Bram Stoker, Hermann Einstein, Vlad Dracula, Jim Bowie, and Elizabeth Bathory, are tied in somehow to the plot. Granted some have a much greater role, and they are all rather changed from real life, but the novel is shaped by people we know from our own world. In addition, slight references are made to works such as H.P. Lovecraft's body of writing and the adventures of Indiana Jones, which further tie this alternate universe to ours. And this is where I get conflicted with the novel because with all these connections and webs between famous figures, it makes the world feel much smaller and like the world belongs to only a handful of special people. Yes, Gideon our everyman protagonist is a nobody from nowhere who has become elevated because of a combination of chance and his willingness to do what it takes, but it makes me feel like only a select few people can travel in the realm of heroes because they have something special about them. It makes this world of adventure feel smaller and walled off, forbidden to the majority of us. 

My other big issue was how Maria, the titular Mechanical Girl of the novel also gets treated. I wish to avoid spoilers for my gentle readers, but let us just say that poor Maria suffers from quite a few frustrating and institutionally sexist tropes as a character. I certainly would not claim that this was any overt attempt of the author, as I have pointedly said at various points in previous reviews, but I continue to be frustrated that such tropes continue to circulate within the medium of fiction.

Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl is certainly a well-written adventure and quite enjoyable, but as I said there are certain issues which make the book feel much smaller than a world of grand adventure and unfortunate usage of harmful tropes. The ending was left very open and the possibility of a sequel is certainly there, with the tantalizing promise of a look at a changed America, but that will remain unresolved for now. If you're hard-up for a steampunk adventure than you could certainly do worse, but I'm sure you could do much better as well. 

- Kalpar