Affinity Bridge - Book Review - The Armchair Empire

Paperback: 336 pages

Publisher: Tor Books; 1 edition (July 17, 2009)

Newsletter

Be notified of site updates. Sign-up for the Newsletter sent out twice weekly.

Enter E-Mail Address Below:

Affinity Bridge

by George Mann

NOTE: Fair warning here, I might be making a foray into spoiler country here with this review. I’ll tread as lightly as possible.

Affinity Bridge is the kind of novel that hits just about every topic that tweaks the pleasure center of my gamer brain and that part further back that houses my seven-year old mind that still thinks Scooby-Doo is the pinnacle of mystery story telling. It contains a Sherlock Holmes/Gabriel Knight hybrid protagonist (Newbury), a young woman assistant (Hobbs), automaton robots, giant blimps, a zombie plague, and an evil industrialist. All that and a few mysteries!

Author George Mann creates an alternate Victorian England in the vein of what is popularly known as “steampunk”, which is just slightly different than the one we all know. Passenger blimps travel across the sky, steam-powered cabs churn through

Advertisement

the street alongside horse-drawn carriages, and Queen Victoria herself is kept alive by a breathing apparatus. As fantastical as all this is, the way that Mann describes London – the fog, the cold damp, the dark alleys, the gas lights – makes it very easy to keep the tale somewhat rooted in “reality.” Never mind that the fog hides lurching “revenants” (i.e. zombies) and a glowing policeman who

Advertisement

may or may not be responsible for a number of murders.

Taken chapter by chapter Affinity Bridge could quite easily be turned into an action/adventure game. The early chapters are the investigative phase, but in the latter fourth of the book it’s a series of running battles. At that point, I couldn’t put it down. I’d already figured out most of the mystery – robot zombies! Shit, yeah! – even before Newbury and Hobbs but at that point I was along for the ride. A lopsided battle against zombies, a fight against a couple of assassin robots then a showdown on top of a moving train… well, it just gets ridiculous.

But the good kind of ridiculous.

Like the best of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. No matter how beat up James Bond is he always manages a way to achieve some kind of victory.

And like Fleming, Mann takes some cliché shortcuts when it comes to creating the characters – Newbury appears to be obsessed with tea – but you know what? I don’t care. It makes it much easier to get to know the characters because you’re probably already familiar with the stereotype. (Again, another aspect that fits with gaming perfectly.)

Affinity Bridge does a great job setting up a sequel – or even prequels as there are plenty of allusions to past exploits – and it’ll definitely be on my reading list when it’s eventually published. Sure, it’s pulpy, but I liked it.

- Aaron Simmer

(August 25, 2009)