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The Steam Magnate

by Dana Copithorne

Published by Aio Publishing Company, LLC.

Copyright 2006

Reviewed by Jonette Butler Review posted 9/16/08



Late in April of 2007, we received a book too late for submission for the Compton Crook award. That book was a fantasy novel: the Steam Magnate, … a novel of the Broken Glass City by Dana Copithorne, © 2006, published by Aio Publishing Company, LLC. And boy, can Dana Copithorne write! This is Literature with a capital “L”. She creates a culture and economy unlike any I have ever encountered, built on a history and mythology created for her story. The Glass City haunted my dreams nightly as I was reading the book.

The likeable main character, Kyra, seems to plunge in over her head into situation after situation. She becomes entangled with Eson, who has inherited from his family power — economic, technological and magical, but he is a restless spirit and gets himself into political difficulty. Author Copithorne slides smoothly throughout the book from Kyra’s voice to Eson’s voice to third party observer. It is an interesting technique which takes the reader deeper into the character’s psyches.

Aio Publishing is a small private house which specializes in ”a literary breed of speculative fiction”. They make available a reading guide for book discussion groups, although when I last checked, the link to the guide was not working. You can check out their website at www.aiopublishing.com.

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