Karen Memory

Locations
Call Number: Science Fiction / Bear, Elizabeth, Adult Book / Fiction / Science Fiction / General / Bear, Elizabeth
On Shelf At: Downtown Library, Westgate Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Science Fiction / Bear, Elizabeth	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Science Fiction / General / Bear, Elizabeth	4-week checkout	On Shelf

"A Tom Doherty Associates book."
"Steampunk novel set in Seattle in the late 19th century--an era when the town was called Rapid City, when the parts we now call Seattle Underground were the whole town (and still on the surface), when airships plied the trade routes bringing would-be miners heading up to the gold fields of Alaska, and steam-powered mechanicals stalked the waterfront. Karen is a "soiled dove," a young woman on her own who is making the best of her orphaned state by working in Madame Damnable's high-quality bordello. Through Karen's eyes we get to know the other girls in the house--a resourceful group--and the poor and the powerful of the town. Trouble erupts into her world one night when a badly injured girl arrives at their door, seeking sanctuary, followed by the man who holds her indenture, who has a machine that can take over anyone's mind and control their actions. And as if that wasn't bad enough, the next night brings a body dumped in their rubbish heap--a streetwalker who has been brutally murdered" -- from publisher's web site.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Good world-building, great first-person narrative, poor action writing. submitted by eknapp on March 24, 2015, 11:58am Intrepid Wild West steampunk prostitutes heroically battle an evil politician with a mind control machine, a Jack-the-Ripper-esque serial killer, and a foreign conspiracy to undermine the USA in 1880 Washington Territory. Somehow it's not as wacky as it sounds.

The world building is pretty cool. It quivers with frontierish grit, independence, determination, racism and sexism and good old-fashioned Christian sanctimony. It's narrated first-person by one of the fearless strumpets, and her uneducated voice is wonderfully unassuming and sympathetic:


"Being a growed woman, it turned out, was harder work than it looked. But that's a thing, too, ain't it? Them as work hardest get no respect for it--women, ranch hands, sharecroppers, factory help, domestics--and them as spend all their time talking about how hard they work have no idea what an honest day's labor for nary enough pay to put beans in your family's bellies is all about."


Except for the abundant disparaging observations on the nature of "men", her perspective and quirky musings are a lot of fun to read. (Karen wonders at one point who she'll see first in Heaven, her long dead parents or her recently deceased friend; does it go in order of closeness or recency of demise? In Karen-speak it was movingly adorable.) In this book at least, that writing was Bear's greatest strength.

The action bits on the other hand are highly implausible. Downright silly. [SPOILER]One plucky heroine takes out a hulking sailor with half a bobby pin. I mean, maybe...if in addition to being a spunky 95-pound genius steampunk whore she was also a ninja. But she's not. [END SPOILER] A lot of the action sequences are resolved in ways designed to maximize ocular rotation.

Karen Memory's plot structure really has the feel of an old Hardy Boys book. Evil lunges into their lives uninvited, they get captured three or four times, always make clever but unlikely escapes, there's a slight twist at the end--not too big--and cue the happy ending. Straight out of Franklin W Dixon.

But it's worth the price of admission for the world, the characters, and Karen Memory herself.

A nice antidote to the world's crap submitted by ckfinzel on June 19, 2018, 6:49pm I love everything about this book. It's a queer, female-centric, steampunk historical fiction hero's journey with a lesbian love story. It's quirky, funny, strong, and moving at times. The ending feels a bit contrived, but this story is highly enjoyable.