There’s a brand new Fantasy Steampunk bundle, available only for another 11 days. It’s not only a really good deal, but it features the Prohibition Orcs novel Frozen Talons in the lowest tier!
This bundle is full of great stuff. Gleason, Pope, and Carriger and titans of steampunk. I read Kilgore and Sawyer quite regularly. Rusch’s magnificent Fey series is early steampunk. The other authors and editors, well, given by the company they’re in, I have high expectations for them all.
I’m gonna be egotistical and share a brand-new reader review on Frozen Talons:
If Tolkien’s elves went West to America, then eventually, the orcs would follow.
Michael takes that silly idea and weaves a sometimes funny, sometimes touching tale of how those poor orcs could survive in Detroit of the 1920s.
Being big and strong, they get manual labor jobs. Dirty work that nobody else wants to do.
And, given half a chance, they become what the Purple Gang only dreamed about- the best rum-runners in the mid-west.
The plots get complex. Unlike most fantasy stories, these orcs have real motivations, consistent behavior, and rich lives as they adapt to a world they never imagined.
And the orcs are likeable characters. Maybe not your first choice for a dinner companion, but characters you fall in love with and want to see succeed.
And they do succeed, but not the way you expect.
A couple folks have told me that Prohibition Orcs is not steampunk, but dieselpunk. They’re too early for dieselpunk. They’re too late for steampunk. There won’t be a ProhibitionPunk, however, because anyone who understands punk knows that Prohibition was arguably the most punk era of American history. The system failed people, so they did it themselves. There’s literal steam in the orc books, what with boilers and repurposed steam locomotives powering factories, along with giant mechanical systems and the general cleverness of steampunk, so I’m going to say they belong in steampunk as much as they belong anywhere. Perhaps with a bit more emphasis on the punk than the steam, however.
So grab the Storybundle while you can. A chunk of your purchase goes to help Girls On The Run.