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Steelhands, by Jaida Jones, Danielle Bennett
PDF Download Steelhands, by Jaida Jones, Danielle Bennett
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In the land of Volstov, Owen Adamo, the hard-as-nails ex–Chief Sergeant of the Dragon Corps, learns that Volstov’s ruler, the Esar, is secretly pursuing plans to resurrect magically powered sentient robot dragons—even at the risk of igniting another war. Though Adamo is not without friends—the magician Royston and former corpsman Balfour—there is only so much he and his allies can do. Adamo has been put out to pasture, given a professorship at the University. Royston, already exiled once, dares not risk the Esar’s wrath again. And Balfour, who lost both his hands in the war, is now a diplomat—and still trying to master the metal replacements that have earned him various nicknames . . . of which “Steelhands” is the least offensive.
But sometimes help comes where it’s least expected. In this case, from two students: Laurence, a feisty young woman raised by her father to be the son he never had, and Toverre, her brilliant if neurotic fiancé. When a mysterious illness strikes the university, Laurence takes her suspicions to Adamo—and unwittingly sets in motion events that will change Volstov forever.
- Sales Rank: #1674665 in Books
- Published on: 2012-06-26
- Released on: 2012-06-26
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 6.87" h x 1.00" w x 4.20" l, .50 pounds
- Binding: Mass Market Paperback
- 496 pages
Review
“I’ve read and reread this series. I think it’s great.”—New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris
“The authors’ brilliantly established world, part magical, part steampunk, and the distinct voices of the four principal narrators make this fantasy a top-notch choice.”—Library Journal
“Steelhands [is an] A+ . . . There is something ‘magical’ about these books.”—Fantasy Book Critic
About the Author
Jaida Jones and Danielle Bennett wrote their first novel together, Havemercy, over the Internet—Jones in New York, Bennett in British Colombia. They now shuttle between apartments in Brooklyn and Victoria, B.C., which makes their collaboration much easier. They are also the authors of Shadow Magic and Dragon Soul.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
One
ADAMO
The way I saw it--and probably would 'til the day I died--was that both times the rug was pulled out from underneath my boots, it was somehow because of that whelp. Not even the whoreson who usually gave me all my trouble. It was the brother of the whoreson who usually gave me all my trouble.
I'd never asked to be anybody's pen pal, since I'd never been much for writing letters in the first place and all the people I'd ever cared to know lived in the same city as I did. The end of the war had fractured some things though, sent little pieces skittering all over, and one of those pieces just happened to have a brother with a real sick sense of humor, at least by my understanding.
Dear Adamo, the letter began--no Chief Sergeant or nothing, which was technically correct, but seemed oddly personal to me.
It is my sincerest wish that this letter finds you well, that its contents are not despoiled before you've had a chance to read them, and most of all that this information doesn't bring you trouble.
I will jump straight to the sticking point and hope that you can forgive me: While in the desert, Rook and I very nearly saw the resurrection of a dragon. Havemercy, specifically. A pair of magicians from Xi'an had pieced her together from old, found parts and somehow managed to get a hold on her soul as well. Please don't mistake me for a philosopher; the soul is a device both magical and mechanical, with the essence of a powerful magician inside to give the creation life. These men had planned on using a woman to house the dragon's soul--a decidedly unmechanical vessel, but one that perhaps seemed easier to control. I tell you all this because Rook and I were not alone when we made this discovery. There was an agent of the Esar present, and what she learned she has no doubt already passed on to her master.
I know that the Esar is a secretive man, one who guards his possessions jealously. In light of that, I considered the possibility that he might never share this story with you and thus felt dutybound to impart it myself. The dragons belonged to more than just one man, however powerful that man might be.
I have no counsel for what you might do with this information, my own strengths lying largely in the theoretical and analytical fields. I merely felt that it was the right thing to pass it along and hope that you do not find yourself too at odds with my assumption.
That was it--the vital parts anyway. I'd squeezed out a lot of the hand-wringing that came afterward and there were three more long paragraphs all about how Rook had taken to the desert like a camel and nearly became prince of the nomads, but that wasn't the shit that was going to get me arrested.
He'd wrapped up the whole thing with Best wishes. After crafting a letter that read like Thom was putting every ounce of that enormous brain into getting me arrested, he ended it with "best wishes."
I'd met some cracked little teacups in my time, but he had to be the absolute worst.
"So the thrust of the matter," I concluded, myself, "is he says you need a living, breathing human being to bind their soul to, and he thinks the ethical implications of something like that would be devastating. Not just for Volstov, but for everywhere else." I reached for the letter to get the proper phrase, the one he'd used that'd made me laugh out my breakfast, although it wasn't for pure humor. "Oh, yeah. 'Just devastating.' He feels compelled, because of our time together, y'see, and because of his brother being 'one of us,' to make sure I'm aware of a situation that, as far as I'm concerned, could probably take my head off my body a damned sight easier than flying."
And that, as anybody knew, was dangerous enough. Commanding the members of the Dragon Corps from Proudmouth's back wasn't exactly the job a sane soldier volunteered for, was it? Even if the truth was I'd never really volunteered for it in the first place--I was just a whole lot better than most people at holding back all the shit I wanted to say when somebody more important was doling out the steaming heaps.
Bitter, my good friend Royston might've called it, but it wasn't really that. It was just practical thinking. My theory was, the less you got involved, the less chance there was of someone important taking exception to your head and the way it sat on your shoulders.
Which was why I didn't appreciate getting this crazy letter from a man I already knew thought more of the ethical implications of something than he did of the personal ones. In other words, me holding this letter, getting it over breakfast and breaking the seal and reading it with my buttered rolls, would've had more implications in th'Esar's eyes than just ethical ones.
Sometimes, a man just didn't want to know.
And that was kind of the tactic I was taking right now. Because in that letter, the words that loudmouthed, proudarsed, crazyeyed ex-airman Rook's damn strange little brother had used--such as "resurrection" and "soul" and "breathing new life"--sounded a lot to me like playing at things I wasn't meant to play at. More often than not, I gave my hand away at cards.
"So, I burn it," I said, with only a hint of uncertainty. I didn't want to be the man who went to his friends asking for advice with his mind already made up. No man was ever more of a burr in the arse than that one, and I wasn't going to be him. Not even in my old age.
Across from me, Royston took a neat little sip of his coffee. Then he reached up to smooth the two, maybe three, gray hairs growing at his left temple--the ones no one would notice if he wasn't so damn self-conscious about them. After all, he was considerably less advanced into his forties than myself. In fact, I thought it was downright rude of him to remind me.
"Well, it is a conundrum," he said finally.
He was doing it to needle me, I told myself, but years of getting used to the behavior never quite meant you became master at dealing with it. I snorted, just giving him the rise he wanted, not to mention buying him extra time to think up a more clever response, then handed it over.
"Well," I said, filling up the air. I hated to watch people read things, and Roy knew it.
"Reading," Roy replied quietly, with that distant air he only got when he was putting his mind to something complicated, or talking about his boy.
Now that was a mess of worms, I told myself--a can of them that'd already been opened--and to avoid hurting certain feelings I had to throw myself into the task of teasing Roy every chance I got, just so he'd know how I felt about the matter. But it'd probably take a few years before I'd be comfortable sitting in the same room with the two of them. Pointing out that a man was still a baby was no fun when that man was in the room, if only because teasing babies just wasn't right no matter who you were doing it for.
Those thoughts seemed to occupy enough time that Roy finally cleared his throat, tossing the letter down between our coffee cups. I eyed it unhappily, this simpleenoughlooking thing that I knew wasn't going to prove simple for me--at least not now that I knew about it.
I wasn't the sort of man who could just sit on information. I'd been bred to act, and all this sitting around and hemming and hawing was starting to chafe at my very last nerve. Wouldn't've expected it to be the quiet that got me in the end either, but the world was a strange place.
"I'll look into it," Roy said.
"Somehow, I knew that'd be your answer." I sighed. "But with a nose that large, I suppose you can't help poking it into things."
"Darkmooded as you are, it isn't anything yet," Roy continued, too distracted by his thoughts to let the teasing get to him. This wasn't a normal coffee we were having, and for whatever reasons that made me even more clenchjawed. There was no way I wasn't going to tear into some poor, hopeful tactician in my afternoon lecture that day, and be hearing about it from the wealthy parents a few days afterward. Couldn't I please be easier on their precious offspring? The lecture room wasn't part of the Airman, as far as they could tell.
And, the worst one: This isn't wartime anymore, you know.
Not that I was against the war being over--not even when it was all I'd ever known, which meant I knew a whole lot more about it than the sapeyed creatures who shuffled into the room and daydreamed about their ponies back in the country while I tried to impress upon them the importance of strategy, or coax some milk of inspiration out of them in return for all the milk they'd sucked from the world, probably right up until the moment they were sent away to 'Versity. Maybe they missed it now. Maybe if I bottled some and gave them all nap times and dollies, they'd be more inclined to think about what the differences would be between an airstrike and a land strike.
And Brothers and Sisters of Regina help them if one of them ever questioned the real importance of discussing airstrikes again, since wasn't that a moot point these days anyway?
Nothing in war or the possibility of war--and definitely not during the preparation for war--was a moot point. I'd drum it into their skulls yet, and if not me, then some future generation of real war drums. Not exactly comforting, but it was a salary and I hadn't been fired yet--no matter how much some parents objected to the shouting.
"Oh, it's something," I muttered. "You mind hanging on to it?"
"You're acting uncharacteristically suspicious," Roy told me, which was true.
"Boy who wrote that's the opposite of any goodluck charm I've ever had," I explained, backward country as it sounded. "Some men carry around a rabbit's foot or a lock of their true love's hair or what have yous. Well, the way I figure it is, I'm not carrying around anything he touched."
"You know what this means?" Roy said.
I shrugged.
"It means if I'm caught with this information on me before I-before we--decide what to do with it, the Esar will be very, very displeased." This was just one more reason that sending all these words in a letter was more than just bad luck: it was suicidal stupidity. "He already doesn't like me, though I'm sure his feelings about you are much more complicated. I might even be exiled again. Once is painful enough; twice just seems excessive, don't you agree?"
"Well, look on the bright side, anyway," I replied. "Maybe you'll find yourself another . . ."
"One of these days, Owen," Roy told me, in a tone I really didn't like, "you're going to find yourself falling in love. And I can only hope it will be the most outlandish--the most wildly inappropriate--coupling that Thremedon has ever seen."
"Considering that rumor with Margrave Holt and his greyhounds--" I began.
"I think you need a good walk to clear your head," Royston suggested. "And, for that matter, so do I."
I wasn't inclined to take Roy's advice any more often than I had to. Listening to a man like him when he told you what was best for you would only give him the hot air he required to fill his own head. And as much as I teased him about his nose--great honking detail that it was--the size of his head as it was remained quite tolerable. For the time being, in any case.
But he was right about the walk, as he was right about so many other things that he had no business knowing, let alone sharing.
That was the problem with old friends--and magicians, to boot. Putting both attributes in the same man was like committing yourself to a life sentence, though I'd never actually give him the satisfaction of acknowledging that.
The point was, I did need a good walk to clear my head. And I intended to take it, but I needed some time on my own--if Roy would allow it. Which he usually didn't.
"Along the 'Versity Stretch perhaps?" Royston suggested, already out of his chair and straightening his waistcoat--some gold and black brocade fashion that looked like it cost about as much as the entire coffee shop. I'd seen everyone wearing the sort recently, leave it to Royston to lead the trend. "You might become inspired for your next lecture."
"Head's not gonna get much clearer if you come along," I pointed out, dropping a few coins on the table for politeness's sake. "When you talk, I can't hear myself think."
"Who said I expected you to be able to?" Royston asked.
"Oh, I don't know," I said, putting on my coat. "Little someone by the name of Mistress Common Courtesy?"
"I can assure you that were I ever to take a mistress, it would not be her," Royston said, tying his scarf in a fussy kind of knot before heading for the door.
Wind hit us both square in the face, cold as frozen steel and just about as sharp when we stepped out into the street. Just like always, my muscles tensed all over--though not from the cold, because who would I be if I couldn't handle a little of that? No, it was more like the memory of what wind on my face had meant once and how hard it was to teach your brain something once the rest of you'd gone and figured it out already. All I had was my two boots firmly on the ground, and they weren't going anywhere but down the road. Maybe toward the Rue around where they'd erected those fool statues of me and the boys.
Small miracle no one'd knocked a piece off or written anything vulgar on 'em yet, but that'd come with time. Hell, if some of the boys had been boys still and not just statues, they'd probably have done it themselves--or at least the ones that could write, with messages to each other about the night before, what kinds of women they'd been with and fancied themselves to have pleasured, sharing it so all Thremedon could know just the sort of men they were looking up to.
But I had to steer clear of those would'vebeens, else it'd be another lane I was walking down.
From the Hardcover edition.
Most helpful customer reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Another winner from the authors
By Liviu C. Suciu
INTRODUCTION: After taking a bit of a gamble in following "Havemercy" with "Shadow Magic" that kept the four narrator structure but changed all narrators, the location from Volstov to Ke Han, the theme from metal dragons and war to diplomacy and treachery and alternated the perspective of the "good guys" from the series debut with the one of their long time enemies, in the third series book Dragon Soul the authors returned to the magical dragons and the odd duo of Thom and Rook while expanding the universe to a desert scape and its people, as well as continuing to diversify the cast to include a Volkov magician and a Ke-Han treasure hunter who also were the first female narrators of the series.
Steelhands picks up where Dragon Soul ends but it returns to Volstov's capital, its main college - the Versity - and the Esar's palace while featuring all new narrators to bring the total to 14 in four books, though in this case two are old friends from earlier installments.
OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: After visiting the desert and finding some startling facts, Rook decided he loves the clan life there and stayed with his new chieftain friend from Dragon Soul, while Thom obediently though not particularly excitedly, followed his brother's lead. However they needed to inform someone of the unexpected and potentially very dangerous things they had discovered, so who better than their former comrades in the Dragon Corps, most notably their chief, the steady Sergeant Adamo.
So we have the natural narrator choices of Adamo, now professor of strategy at the Versity and the biggest statue in the heroic monument commissioned by the Esar to mark Volstov's triumph in the war, and Balfour who has the steelhands of the title - a fusion of magic and technology that replaced the hands he lost in the climax of the war with Ke Han in the first volume.
As main non-pov characters we also see margrave aka magician Royston and his live-in boyfriend Hal who were the other two original pov's in Havemercy in addition to Thom and Rook, with Royston bobbing in and out of the Esar's favor, though now he is "settled" and stays away from the unconventional behavior that led to his exile in that book, while Hal has been appointed assistant professor of magic at the Versity.
But there is the new too, namely the country youngsters pov's: Laure(nce), a tomboyish girl with a boy's name and her "fiance", Toverre, a girlish boy with a crush on Hal, both just arriving from the sticks on the Esar's new scholarships that have been instituted to bring "new country blood" to the capital, a sensible choice on its face considering how Hal, another boy from the middle of nowhere, saved everyone's bacon in Havemercy.
Steelhands starts with Adamo receiving Thom's letter informing him about the events in Dragon Soul; since that is something that has huge possible implications, he starts getting in touch with the survivors of the Dragon Corps, Roy and Hal to discuss how to deal with the possible issues, while being clearly aware of the danger this entails.
In the meantime, Laure and Toverre get used to the capital and college life, make friends with their classmates, while quite unexpectedly Laure finds Adamo's unconventional teaching style very appealing, so she brings herself quite forcefully to his attention - as "an immortalized in stone" hero of the war, Adamo is untouchable by the Versity staid faculty who can only saddle him with a bumbling "graduate assistant", so these scenes offer both comic relief and a wry commentary on academia.
Of course soon things start happening with disappearances and discoveries and the two threads connect, though I have to say that happens in quite predictable ways and I was not really surprised by most of the later occurrences. However the POV's more than made for that since they were fresh and very well realized, while the writing style remained the same flowing and engaging one of the earlier three novels.
The strength of this series is in first and foremost in the "human interest" part, since the authors keep creating convincing and *very different* character voices each book and make us the readers really care for them; sure there is magic and a good world building and a fair amount of action, but getting to see the world from fresh perspectives and caring for the fates of Laure, Adamo and the rest is what makes this book stand out.
The ending is very good too, wrapping up the two converging threads though of course new vistas open and I am really curious where the two authors go from here since I definitely want more! I would also add that while the four books follow each other chronologically and their stories connect, each has its own resolution of its main thread or threads so they can be read as standalones with just a little brush-up on what's what.
As the other series novels, Steelhands (A+) was a book that once opened, it just took me in and I could not stop reading it until the end. There is something "magical" about these books, so despite their switching theme, location, narrators I need only to browse them to be entranced again and again...
Note: this review has been originally published on Fantasy Book Critic and all the links and references are found there
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Original, and wonderfully imagined and thought through
By Tracet
I hate starting in the middle of a series. I'm usually pretty compulsive about it - if I haven't read book one, I won't read any of it. But sometimes I will put my name in for something on the LibraryThing Early Reviewers page, wherever the book falls in its series - kind of on the assumption that I'm not going to get it. From the May batch of early reviewers I received Steelhands, by Jaida Jones and Danielle Bennett - "Havemercy #4". Feeling my duty to get the read and review done before the anticipated release date in August, I squared my shoulders and plunged in.
The two ladies who wrote this should give lessons to all writers, fantasy and otherwise, who write more than one book in the same world. All of them. I don't remember ever reading another book which handled the problem of InfoDump in such a skilful manner: I always knew exactly what I needed to know, when I needed to know it - no less, but also no more, or not much more, so I'm left with the deep need to read the other books. Soon.
The story is told in a revolving first person point of view, moving fluidly from ex-Chief Sergeant of the Dragon Corps to his old comrade Balfour to (from Goodreads via randomhouse.com) "Laurence, a feisty young woman whose father raised her to be the son he never had, and Toverre, her fiancé, a brilliant if neurotic dandy who would sooner share his wife-to-be's clothes than her bed". That's pretty good. They're terrific characters, and each has his own voice which is identifiable and unique from the others, in small ways and large. I've read reviews of other books which don't like alternating first-person narrations; this is not for them (though I wish they'd give it a try). I do (I've actually started a book using the technique), and I loved this.
Steelhands was beautifully written - original, and wonderfully imagined and thought through. I've read very little steampunk so far, but this is exactly what I hoped for and wanted from the genre. The characters were not necessarily all people I'd want to go out to dinner with (most of them not, I think), but I loved spending page-time with them, and I look forward to meeting many of them again. They were all of them excellent companions on the page.
I've discovered a reason to plunge in in the middle of a series: it's lovely that there are more books in a current series already in existence - I don't have to wait for their publication. My birthday's coming up ...
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent innovative series
By Anup
Superb story...after reading this i purchased the other three also. Innovative world building blended with fantasy context...cant wait for the next part of the series!
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