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Title: What Ho, Automaton!
Series: Reeves & Worcester Steampunk Mysteries #1
Author: Chris Dolley
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Steampunk Mystery
Pages: 143
Words: 52K
| Synopsis: |
From the Publisher
What Ho, Automaton! chronicles the adventures of Reggie Worcester, gentleman consulting detective, and his gentleman’s personal gentle-automaton, Reeves.
Reggie, an avid reader of detective fiction, knows two things about solving crime: One, the guilty party is always the person you least suspect. And, two, The Murders in the Rue Morgue would have been solved a lot sooner had the detective the foresight to ask the witnesses if they’d seen any orang-utans recently. Reeves needs all his steam-powered cunning and intellect to curb the young master’s excessive flights of fancy. And prevent him from getting engaged.
The book contains two stories set in an alternative 1903 where an augmented Queen Victoria is still on the throne and automata are a common sight below stairs.
What Ho, Automaton! – an 8,000 word novelette of how the two met.
Something Rummy This Way Comes – a 41,000 word novella chronicling their first case. When Reggie discovers that four debutantes have gone missing in the first month of The London Season and, for fear of scandal, none of the families have called the police, he feels compelled to investigate. With the help of Reeves’s giant brain and extra helpings of fish, he conducts an investigation that only a detective of rare talent could possibly envisage.
Mystery, Zeppelins, Aunts and Humour. A steam-powered Wodehouse pastiche.
| My Thoughts: |
Oh my! This hit my Wodehouse funny bone perfectly. This is a parody of PG Wodehouse’s Jeeves & Wooster series and I’m not sure it would really work if you’re not familiar with the original. However, I AM familiar with the original and this send up had me in stitches. If you’re not familiar with English English (as opposed to Real American English) Worcester is pronounced almost the same as Wooster, so even the names are a great parody.
This is not a timeless classic. But it is a boatload of fun and had me laughing out loud. It reminded me of my reaction to the first couple of Jeeves books. And since there are only four books in this Reeves and Worcester series, I don’t have to worry about going overboard and burning out on the humor (which is pretty much what happened to me with Jeeves, too much in a row).
The steampunk side of things was handled very lightly so it didn’t overwhelm the story but it had some big intrusions (the Queen is a cyborg and the Germans are trying to replace British royalty with robots) so if steampunk is your thing, this should fill that itch.
The only reason I’m not giving this 5stars is because there is one rather “swishy” character that really toed the line but didn’t cross it and a rather crude sentence near the end about body parts.
Bookstooge's Reviews on the Road 
This does sound like fun.
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It really was. I’d forgotten how much I like the humor from Jeeves and Wooster until I read this series. Good stuff 🙂
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Is that me on the airship, relaxing while you pilot?
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No, that is the Emperor in disguise with an undercover Ewok getting ready to jab him with a stone spear.
What you can’t see is that Han, Leia and Luke are all inside the zeppelin, laughing to themselves because they replaced the ewok’s hidden stone speartip with a nerf one. They expect much hilarity to ensue 😀
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There’s a lot more going on in that picture than I thought! I got the three Star Wars films for 50p and thought I might as well get my money’s worth.
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Dolley is a master of understatement.
And did you get dvd’s, blurays or vhs? and does it include the awful Christian Hayden as Ghost Anakin at the end instead of the REAL actor?
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Yes, I noticed him at the Ewok orgy at the end. It was a DVD set.
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Leave it to Lucas to destroy a perfectly good scene 😦
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Once again we are reading things in the same line. Im close to finishing The Mechanical re read also set in alt-history Netherlands and France.
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It’s like we’re accidentally psychic or something 😀
Is the re-read holding up?
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Yeah , five star material. Its in preperation for book two.
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Oh, that is goooood!
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I am tempted to tell you that you should check it out, but i am afraid our views might differ a lot… will be working on the review over the weekend. Have to search for my previous review, and see what i said there before i repeat myself
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😀
yeah, re-reads can be trick to review. Especially if you liked it the first time and also like it again. How many times can you say “I liked this book”? 😀
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This sounds fun Booky!
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Oh it was. Made me glad I’m a reader 😀
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I do love movies, but reading is the best!
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I am glad you can balance them both….
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Glad this worked out for you so well. Happy reading.
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Thanks Shane. It was a blast to read. Being so short probably helped too 🙂
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Oh that’s right Worcester is pronounced Wooster. Sounds like a great story, man.
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Yeah, another stupid thing about the english language. Makes absolutely n sense.
It was great and understanding the riff on Jeeves and Wooster just made it so much better 🙂
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I kind of want to read this now
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If you liked Jeeves even a tiny bit, this should scratch that same humor itch 🙂
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I love Jeeves. I’m just a huge fan of Wodehouse.
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I can’t say with total certainty then, but I’d lean towards you liking this. It’ll depend on if the parody rubs you the right or wrong way.
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Can I repeat it a third time? Of course I can! This sounds fun, Booky!
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You know me, all about the fun 😉
Of course, this is probably just the right size for someone who watches movies, on their phone, hahahahaa 😀
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Boo! Burn the books! Burn ’em!
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You had me at “Wodehouse and Steam Punk.”
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If you like either of those things, you’ll probably like this. If you like both, well, you’ll probably have a real good time 🙂
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It’s even better than that. I like the visual aesthetic of steam punk; the class-war aspect, not so much. I think Wodehouse might be just the light touch it needs.
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I’m tempted by this…
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They are novellas, so no big time investment is needed….
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Any reason you wanted to read a parody? Curiosity? 😛
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I’d seen someone do a review of it and since it’s been since November of ’20 since I’d read any Wodehouse it just seemed like the right time.
And it turned out to be the correct choice 😀
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I like the sound of this and will certainly be checking it out. I love how he used ‘Reggie’ as the name, that being the original name for Bertie before he changed it.
I won’t lie, the phrase ‘Real American English’ had me distracted to the point where I had to read the review twice. Nothing quite sunk in after that 😉
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I did not know that Bertie was originally slated to be a Reggie. That is pretty neat in fact.
Hahahahaa. Us Yanks like to do our own thing, as you might have noticed back in 1776 😉
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I don’t know … according to the July 4th entry into King George’s Diary ‘Nothing important happened today’ 😂
Yea, the very first stories featured Jeeves and ‘Reggie Pepper’ who quickly changed to Bertie after a few stories 🙂
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King George was just jealous that George Washington invented the nuclear bomb first. Now that’s a REAL historical fact! FACT 😉
Reggie Pepper. Sounds like a name from a terrible boy band, hahahahaa.
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Oppenhiemer: ‘I have become death, destroyer of worlds’
George Washington: ‘bitch, please. You have become a plagarist, stealing my bombs’.
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Oh, that’s great!
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