Genre: Steampunk, Historical France
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About The Book
Paris 1880, the City of Electric Light
Clockwork nobles of the Court promenade through the halls of Versailles, while Watcher spheres and cyborg police menace people in the streets of Paris.
Adelaide, the Royal Scientist Doctor, works frantically on an automaton designed to replace the failing sovereigns, but can it be ready in time to save the monarchy?
In the cafes of Montmartre, Henri paints the common people chafing under the reign of the Augmented monarchs and dreams of a France free of machines.
John yearns to capture the essence of beauty in his paintings with the luminous Marie-Ange his muse-and handmaid to the ancient Queen of France.
With his brother Henri entangled in revolution, he must choose between the artificial beauty of Court and the movement to restore France.
How much humanity can be lost before you are no longer human?
The Review
This is not your typical steampunk book.
Not that I am any great authority on this subject, having not read a whole lot of steampunk stories over my reading career. I would classify this much more as historical social fantasy, with a very important steampunk element.
It’s set in France in the late 1800s, in a world where the French Revolution never happened because a steampunk technology was able to supply food and stability to the people at the cost of their liberty.
But now things are coming to a head once again.
The story revolves around two brothers. John is a mixed race man, light skinned and able to pass in polite society. He’s also a portrait painter who lives for beauty, and worships the nobility, who have made themselves into the human equivalent of porcelain dolls. It’s a version of beauty untethered to reality.
His half brother Henri, in contrast, is also a painter, but he sees beauty in the common people. With his darker skin, he will never find a home in the houses of nobility, and would never want one. He’s working for the revolution, and hopes for a day when France is once again free.
One day, John gets an invitation to paint a portrait of the queen. When he finally meets Her Majesty, everything he thought he believed is shake to its foundation, and as those cracks spread, they threaten the woman he loves and the very society he lives in.
This is a fascinating book, a case study in “what might have been.” Sikes characters are very well drawn, and are set a collision course with one another from the beginning. The inevitable collision will have great consequences for all involved.
And for one character in particular.
The Archimedean Heart draws you in, weaving a spell that will entrance you, and after the shocking ending, will leave you dying to know what happens next.
Highly recommended.
The Reviewer
Scott is the founder of Queer Sci Fi, Liminal Fiction, and QueeRomance Ink, and a fantasy and sci fi writer in his own right, with more than 30 published short stories, novellas and novels to his credit, including two trilogies.