2015 read #33: The Bullet Catcher's Daughter by Rod Duncan.

The Bullet Catcher's Daughter by Rod Duncan
374 pages
Published 2014
Read from July 8 to July 13
Rating: ★★★ out of 5

The outline of this novel sounds more like a gumbo of cliches and fads somewhat past their expiration date: A steampunk alternate history in which technology is regulated by a sinister Patent Office, and traveling "gypsy" circuses cobble together arcane devices to relieve "jossers" of their money. A daughter of one of these performers, on the run from a lascivious nobleman, earns a living as a private detective, disguising herself as a man when the lights are dim, following the clues of an aristocrat's disappearance into the very world of traveling performers she had had to flee. Soon she discovers that the aristocrat absconded with contraband technology, and soon the Patent Office -- as well as the lascivious nobleman and a traveling circus jealous of its secrets -- are after her. It's like you asked someone to come up with the most contrived and steampunk-y of steampunk plotlines and turned it into an actual book. The only thing is missing is some half-baked appearance from Ancient Horrors.

And yet, for its first two-thirds or so, The Bullet Catcher's Daughter elevates itself above the triteness of its outline, thanks largely to Duncan's zippy prose and his appealing narrator. Only in the last third of the book does the momentum break down, impeded by a change of scenery less interesting than Duncan perhaps supposed, weighed down by the appearance of new central characters that have little life except as plot contrivances. The twists at the end carry no emotional weight because of how little effort went into these characters. We're told the missing aristocrat was motivated by love and a desire to smash the class hierarchy, motivations the glossary implies are carried forward in ensuing volumes by our narrator, but we aren't shown this -- the mere telling of it feels like the last gasp of a storyline that ran out of steam (har har) a hundred pages before.

Perhaps the ensuing volumes will better serve the promise of Elizabeth Barnabus as a character, though I'm not sure what surprises the setting itself might be able to offer, given how generic its setup has been thus far.