| PATRICIA LOOFBOURROW | David looked just like him. “Show me where you last saw the boy.” The Bryce’s back stair appeared much like any two blocks from the Pot: rickety wooden steps with rusty metal banisters leading down to a ratinfested alley. Clouds loomed dark across the sky. The only real light came from an oil lamp far down the alley to our right. We took refuge from the downpour under the eaves, out of the wind. A dark figure moved in the shadows twenty yards to our left. Something about him frightened me. I hoped the rain would hide our words and send him away. “When your boy disappeared, did you find anything amiss?” “Nothing at all. Everything was as it should be, except I found his little broom on the ground,” her voice broke, “and him gone.” I surveyed the alley. It appeared normal … except … I crossed towards a red spot on the far wall, near waist level. “Was this here before he went missing?” “No, mum, at least, I don’t think so.” I leaned over to examine the spot, Tenni’s corset stabbing at my midsection. A solid red silhouette of a dog, ink-stamped onto the wall. The tower clock chimed three. The man began walking towards us.
Uncaged Reviews The Jacq of Spades This book is marketed as a futuristic postapocalyptic, steampunk but for me personally, it reads more like an older Victorian-Gothic time. It doesn’t really give me a real sense of steampunk, only in small doses, like a domed city and inventors. Nor does it really give me a sense of
a futuristic world, as after whatever catastrophe hit the planet – which I never learned, the people seemed to go backwards in their ways of life. I couldn’t actually believe that part of it so much, as what was learned in our day and age, would not have been lost, and here, it seems like people lost their knowledge of things like diabetes calling it the sugar disease. Once you get past that issue, the storyline is very good. Very suspenseful, and the author truly digs out a well thought out world that is intricate and consistent. In this domed city of Bridges, the city is divided into four sections, each controlled by a crime family. Each of these quadrants have the family’s rich estates, and slum areas that are protected by the family they serve. In the middle, is the Pot, which is full of crime, brothels and the poorest of the poor. Jacquie – the voice of this story - is taken from the Pot as a young girl, set up to marry Tony, the son of the crime boss in one of the areas, and that’s where this story is set, after she is already 22 yrs. old and married to Tony. Jacqueline fancies herself a private investigator of sorts, and when a small boy is kidnapped, she goes to great lengths to find out what happened and to get the boy back to his mother. This is a dangerous mission, and could cost her the reputation of her Family and her life. This is where the very intricate story shines. The work that she does, and the secrecy in what she does, from disguises and working with people she doesn’t even know if she can trust, turns this into a very good mystery. It does tend to get a bit confusing, as there are a lot of characters to keep track of, but the author helps out by giving you a rundown in the back of the book, a sort of who’s who. It’s easy to read, with a good storyline and very nicely descriptive places. The ending didn’t really give a perfect answer to the mystery of Issue 4 | November 2016 |
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