Hello fantasy lovers! This month’s Fantasy Book Club read actually tied with last month’s winner. For December we will be reading The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack by Mark Hodder.
“Sir Richard Francis Burton–explorer, linguist, scholar, and swordsman; his reputation tarnished; his career in tatters; his former partner missing and probably dead.
Algernon Charles Swinburne–unsuccessful poet and follower of de Sade; for whom pain is pleasure and brandy is ruin!
They stand at a crossroads in their lives and are caught in the epicenter of an empire torn by conflicting forces: Engineers transform the landscape with bigger, faster, noisier, and dirtier technological wonders; Eugenicists develop specialist animals to provide unpaid labor; Libertines oppose repressive laws and demand a society based on beauty and creativity; while the Rakes push the boundaries of human behavior to the limits with magic, drugs, and anarchy.
The two men are sucked into the perilous depths of this moral and ethical vacuum when Lord Palmerston commissions Burton to investigate assaults on young women committed by a weird apparition known as Spring Heeled Jack, and to find out why werewolves are terrorizing London’s East End.
Their investigations lead them to one of the defining events of the age, and the terrifying possibility that the world they inhabit shouldn’t exist at all!” – Amazon
Buy on Amazon US
Buy on Amazon UK
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Want to join in?
If you would like to join us you can visit our forums and add your name to the list here.
Book Club Rules
Rule 1: We don’t talk about Fantasy Book Club. Oh, sorry that’s a different club. You are actually welcome to invite friends and tweet this link about everywhere. We want as many readers as possible!
So…How does it really work?
Choosing a Book
All books are nominated and voted on by our members. Anyone can nominate a book and everyone can vote. If you’d like to see what’s in the running for next month, you can check out our currently book poll here.
Spoiler Free Discussion
Next, we want discuss our books in a way that will not spoil the story, so we limit how much you can discuss and when.
Week 1 – You may only discuss the first 1/4 of the book
Week 2 – You may only discuss the first 1/2 of the book
Week 3 – You may only discuss the first 3/4 of the book
Week 4 – Anything goes
We are going to go based on page count. So for example, if a book has 500 pages then week one you can discuss up to page 125 and then week two 250 and so on. Each week will have a separate thread, so as not to spoil the story for people who fall behind or come in late.
What if you want to read faster than that?
Not a problem at all. You are more than welcome to read ahead, but when discussing things just remember to post in the appropriate thread. And if you’re not sure when something happened, you can always use the spoiler tag to hide your post.
Should you not want any spoilers or discussion during the reading process, then just come after the end of week three and start discussing the book once you have finished. (This is how most book clubs operate anyway.)
We would love for you to join us! You can sign up for this month’s book club here. Vote on next month’s book club here. Or visit our book club section to see all our past selections here.
Happy Reading!
Julia Kitvaria Sarene
Hope people get into this, because it’s a damn good book.
I won’t be able to pick this up until after Christmas but I should be able to do some catch up reading. It looks awesome, though.
I think everyone who gives this a read will enjoy it. A very, very fun book.