Thought Train to Pusan

With accompanying illustrations by Keith Thompson, Leviathan is a young adult’s Steampunk mechanics vs. Biopunk Darwinists tale set within an alternate history of the initiation of World War I. And at the end of it I was thinking, “that’s it? That’s where you leave me?” only to be pleasantly surprised to discover that Leviathan is only the first in a series of novels (how I wasn’t aware of this before, I’m not sure) that I definitely plan on continuing with when I am able to. The story begins with two separate focuses: Alek, the prince of the Autro-Hungarian Empire, on the run from the country that has turned on him with a small group of loyal men after his parents are assassinated, and Deryn, a young woman who disguises herself as a male in order to join the British Air Service. For the first half of the novel we see these two young people’s lives being swept into adventure and danger as the beginning of the war in Europe unfolds, and I kept wondering how their two paths woul...

I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of tarot cards: how they work, the different beliefs behind them, and more than anything, the symbolism involved. And so, on the spur of a moment, I picked up a book (and set of cards!) on tarot, these ones specifically being in the style of Steampunk. Why not just a regular deck? Because these ones looked beautiful, and I’ve sort of been digging the whole steampunk thing lately. And surprisingly, I feel like I made a bit of a connection to these cards, as weird as that may sound. The images just strike something in me, even if I don’t quite know how to do the whole “reading” thing yet, except for on a level of personal interpretation. In any case, what is included in The Steampunk Tarot Manual is a reasonably comprehensive layout of all the different cards in a typical tarot deck, their standard meanings, and a few different ideas as to what this might mean, especially given the images in the steampunk style. It also includes illustration...