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beccastareyesSo, who likes steampunk? The Constantine Affliction puts a bit of the 'punk' back in steampunk; while both of the main characters (a gentleman who solves crimes in his free time, and a woman reporter trying to get off the fashion beat and onto more newsworthy items) are somewhat privileged, both are a bit outside of society. But Payton/Pratt does at leasat engage in the fact that Victorian England had fabulous clothing, they also had sweatshops. And adding new things like chemically powered light bulbs and clockwork constructions just means that the lower classes have to work harder in awful conditions.
So, the book starts with our detective, Pimm, being blackmailed into helping solve the mystery of who is murdering prostitutes and dumping them in front of a crime lord's brothels. Which... this is Victorian England, and the police aren't terribly concerned with such crimes, but might get interested if it lets them pin down a crime lord. the blackmail on Pimm's part is mostly to keep him from going to the police; he's quite willing to save women's lives from a killer.
Our other narrator, Elanor Skyler (aka E Skye) is pitching an article for her paper about clockwork courtesans. See, in addition to all the wonderful other STDs one can catch from a sex worker, a new one has appeared: the titular Constantine Affliction. Some people are carriers or immune, some die from the disease... but the ones who get it and survive wake up having physically transformed into the opposite sex. Which worries the upper classes enough because it muddles the succession, so among other things, prostitution is made illegal. Which has made some very clever inventor come up with the idea of making a machine that looks a great deal like a woman and falls under a loophole. And Miss Skye figures a story about such a brothel will be risque enough to sell papers... if she can pass as a man to get into a brothel (this is Victorian England, after all). Of course, then she accidentally notices a Very Important Person tinkering with the mechanical bits of one of the automatons (in a decidedly unsexual way), and gets into Trouble.
So, of course Pimm and Skye's path crosses since the brothel she visited was owned by the crime lord that held Pimm's leash. And neither can turn down the mystery... the killer is found relatively early, but it leads to a deeper mystery of what the VIP Skye saw is doing and what's his involvement.
So, the reason I picked up the book was because of the steampunk, but also the Constantine Affliction itself. Because gender fascinates me. And it does show the silliness of Victorian beliefs about sex and gender: we see all these rules about how Pimm and Skye can conduct themselves around one another in company, because she is an unmarried woman*, but it's sort of assumed that A Man Has Needs and visiting a brothel is not spoken of, but a done thing**. It's mentioned that Parliament declared 'no, you always count as the sex you were born', because the lords didn't want to deal with losing heirs who were transformed, or older sisters of heirs who suddenly were pressing to take over once they grew a penis. Which apparently applies to marriage laws, so you might end up married to someone who is now the same sex (but you shouldn't be having sex like that, you perverts!), but that it is totally illegal to marry someone who is now the opposite sex thanks to the Affliction.
One thing I didn't like was that the last bit of the book suddenly brought in Lovecraftian style monsters, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. The book did make plenty of literary illusions -- Virginia Woolf's Orlando was mentioned as one of the first victims of the Affliction, Frankenstein's Monster made an appearance as a side character, and I believe Professor Moriarty was mentioned offhand as a scholar to watch. And 'monsters in the Thames' was set up early, but it just felt a bit abrupt to go from pulpy science to 'shit from other dimensions that is too alien to understand'.
* Pimm is in a marriage of convenience with a friend who got hit by the Affliction. Pimm gets his family to shut up about marrying someone, and Freddy gets an income without embarrassing his family by publicly declaring that he caught a STD.
** Also Victorian divorce laws apparently accept female adultery as a cause, but not male adultery unless the man is doing something more scandalous than sleeping with other women.
So, the book starts with our detective, Pimm, being blackmailed into helping solve the mystery of who is murdering prostitutes and dumping them in front of a crime lord's brothels. Which... this is Victorian England, and the police aren't terribly concerned with such crimes, but might get interested if it lets them pin down a crime lord. the blackmail on Pimm's part is mostly to keep him from going to the police; he's quite willing to save women's lives from a killer.
Our other narrator, Elanor Skyler (aka E Skye) is pitching an article for her paper about clockwork courtesans. See, in addition to all the wonderful other STDs one can catch from a sex worker, a new one has appeared: the titular Constantine Affliction. Some people are carriers or immune, some die from the disease... but the ones who get it and survive wake up having physically transformed into the opposite sex. Which worries the upper classes enough because it muddles the succession, so among other things, prostitution is made illegal. Which has made some very clever inventor come up with the idea of making a machine that looks a great deal like a woman and falls under a loophole. And Miss Skye figures a story about such a brothel will be risque enough to sell papers... if she can pass as a man to get into a brothel (this is Victorian England, after all). Of course, then she accidentally notices a Very Important Person tinkering with the mechanical bits of one of the automatons (in a decidedly unsexual way), and gets into Trouble.
So, of course Pimm and Skye's path crosses since the brothel she visited was owned by the crime lord that held Pimm's leash. And neither can turn down the mystery... the killer is found relatively early, but it leads to a deeper mystery of what the VIP Skye saw is doing and what's his involvement.
So, the reason I picked up the book was because of the steampunk, but also the Constantine Affliction itself. Because gender fascinates me. And it does show the silliness of Victorian beliefs about sex and gender: we see all these rules about how Pimm and Skye can conduct themselves around one another in company, because she is an unmarried woman*, but it's sort of assumed that A Man Has Needs and visiting a brothel is not spoken of, but a done thing**. It's mentioned that Parliament declared 'no, you always count as the sex you were born', because the lords didn't want to deal with losing heirs who were transformed, or older sisters of heirs who suddenly were pressing to take over once they grew a penis. Which apparently applies to marriage laws, so you might end up married to someone who is now the same sex (but you shouldn't be having sex like that, you perverts!), but that it is totally illegal to marry someone who is now the opposite sex thanks to the Affliction.
One thing I didn't like was that the last bit of the book suddenly brought in Lovecraftian style monsters, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. The book did make plenty of literary illusions -- Virginia Woolf's Orlando was mentioned as one of the first victims of the Affliction, Frankenstein's Monster made an appearance as a side character, and I believe Professor Moriarty was mentioned offhand as a scholar to watch. And 'monsters in the Thames' was set up early, but it just felt a bit abrupt to go from pulpy science to 'shit from other dimensions that is too alien to understand'.
* Pimm is in a marriage of convenience with a friend who got hit by the Affliction. Pimm gets his family to shut up about marrying someone, and Freddy gets an income without embarrassing his family by publicly declaring that he caught a STD.
** Also Victorian divorce laws apparently accept female adultery as a cause, but not male adultery unless the man is doing something more scandalous than sleeping with other women.
