If you’d asked me a year ago whether I would read a steampunk novel, I would have had to pull up my trusty Google to figure out what you were asking:

a sub-genre of science fiction and fantasy that includes social or technological aspects of the 19th century (the steam) usually with some deconstruction of, re-imagining of, or rebellion against parts of it (the punk) –from Steampunk.com

No way. Fantasy? 19th Century? Rebellion? Not my areas of interest.

Then I met Emma Jan Holloway’s Baskerville Affair trilogy. True to its genre (well, steampunk is a sub-genre), she includes all those tantalizing elements and more–magic, steam-powered machines, automatons that appear more real than ruse, mechanical mice and birds imbued with invisible spirits, electronic marvels that run daily lives as electricity and oil does ours, powerful egotistical men controlling the lives of London citizens–and Sherlock Holmes. What a marvelous mixture of mayhem!…