I found this handsome hardcover at a local Savers thrift store. It's an alternate-history novel set in Victorian London - though written by a Spanish author - and features elements from the works of H. G. Wells as well as those of Edgar Allan Poe. It's the second in the "Trilogía Victoriana", after Map of Time. [In an interesting little bit of promotion, the endpapers show a red/blue 3D image of space invaders attacking London, and there's a set of 3D glasses included with which to see the image better. Sadly, that's the only illustration; it'd be more worth playing around with the glasses if there were a few more images in the text! But I've taped the glasses back into their mounting page so future readers can try them. Note that the image on the back endpapers is the same as in the front, so the BookCrossing bookplate up front doesn't prevent you from checking out the full image.]

The story itself is very lively indeed, jumping around in time and switching character-viewpoints to tell an elaborate tale of love, envy, and alien invasions. [The time-travel aspect reminded me of The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack, from an alternate-history series starring explorer Richard Burton and poet Algernon Swinburne, though that series tends to be a lot more serious than this book. There's even a mention of Spring Heeled Jack in this story, though whether it's a nod to the actual myth or to Hodder's novels I don't know.]

From the inter-book announcements made in the tone of a carnival barker ("Welcome, dear reader, as you plunge valiantly into the thrilling pages of our melodrama...") to the wildly-colorful characters to the homages to Wells and other authors of the time, I enjoyed it very much - and while the extremely dark and depressing later chapters (I won't say which character/timeline that involves) made me very, very worried, the overall story turns out well. Or (cue dramatic chords here) does it???

There are notes from Invasion of the Body Snatchers, a heavy influence from Campbell's Antarctic shape-shifter tale "Who Goes There?" (and its film adaptations), and of course loads and loads of War of the Worlds (plus The Time Traveler, with speculations as to alternate time-streams, the role of heroes, and the importance of love. Oh, and there's mayhem, massacre, subjugation, and terror - which mixes with the lighter bits in some unexpected ways.

I enjoyed Palma's method of toying with narration - at one point he pauses the action to speculate on what would happen if a certain character had not chosen to join the crew, and then inserts "Ignore my mistake, which is almost certainly due to my failings as a narrator..." before resuming the tale. (This kind of thing happens fairly often: "I trust you have enjoyed our curious tale, though it is filled with incidents so alien to our human experience that it may have obliged you on more than one occasion to raise an eyebrow.")

I plan to leave this book on the book-swap shelf in the Tyngsboro post office lobby at around 2; hope the finder enjoys it!

*** Released as part of the 2015 Oh the Places We Can Go challenge, for a number of lakes named "Sky". ***

*** Released as part of the 2015 4 Elements challenge, for "sky". ***