I would like to begin reviewing books of the steampunk and dark fantasy genres. I pondered which novel to start with. Should I review the book that introduced me to steampunk: The Difference Engine? Or should I start with something a little more lighthearted and easier for most readers to get into: Arcadia Snips and the Clockwork Consortium. In the end, I chose to start with the novel I most recently finished reading: Heart of Veridon by Tim Akers.

Heart of Veridon, by Tim Akers and published by Solaris Books,  is a wonderfully dark tale set in a lush new world of criminals and airships and vengeful angels. This one is a genre bender, and perhaps that is part of what I liked about it. Part Steampunk, part Crime Noir, part Fantasy.

Heart of Veridon tells the tale of Jacob Burn: pilot, criminal and disgraced son of one of the founding families of Veridon. Jacob is aboard a luxury liner airship as it returns to the ancient city, when an old friend shows up and delivers to him a mysterious artifact right before this ship crashes. This was the second time Jacob has been aboard a crashing airship; during the first he was the pilot. Something about the implanted pilot’s engine in his chest does not function properly. After his disgrace, Jacob fell in with the criminal element in the city. A job for his boss Valentine placed him on the airship in the first place.

Jacob’s world crashed down around him as he runs from not only the law but also those he once counted as friends. But even as the array of machines and strange creatures stalk him through the streets of Veridon, something even more sinister and dangerous makes its move against him. An entity that makes him question everything he knows about himself and the city.

Jacob Burn is not really a character you can care about. He is an anti-hero, but is violent and bigoted, and not very competent. He usually gets out of scrapes by either shooting everybody, or getting shot up himself. And it turns out he is indestructible: the mysterious engine in his chest repairs him at an incredible rate. He constantly insults the only people who actually try to help him. He sulks and glowers throughout the entire novel. And yet he is still so compelling, that you just keep reading to see what he is going to do next, or what new delightful detail of Veridon he will reveal.

The tale of Jacob Burn is told from his point of view, a first person narration that I found a bit distracting. It did lend a nice feeling of noir that made me think of Sam Spade. My problem with the narration was that it was entirely written in Jacob’s speech, with fractured sentences and often times vague or confusing descriptions. The pages were laid out rather oddly as well, with a narrow block of text and very wide margins. At first, I thought of a newspaper article. A very, very long newspaper article. Imagine reading 472 pages of first person narrated news-article. It was distracting, to say the least.

What I enjoyed most about this book was not the story or the writing, though both were nicely done(other than the narration complaint), it was the setting.

I absolutely loved the setting Tim Akers created for this book. Its a mix of Dark Fantasy and Crime noir and Steampunk that has been kicked up a notch with the introduction of a living metal and a Church founded on scraps of ancient technology sifted from the river. There are hints of an even older civilization, something dark and sinister, and made up entirely of clockwork.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. I did not at first care for the main character, and still do not like the narration, and yet I kept reading. I will happily pick up the next Tim Akers novel, simply to dive again into this lushly realized and compelling setting. I could care less about more Jacob Burn, but I very much want to learn more about these angels of his. And the good news is he is already at work on the next one.

I give this one four out of five stars.