Daniel A. Rabuzzi's The Choir Boats is a book of somewhat deceptive heritage.  While definitely taking advantage of the current interest in steampunk and the Age of Reason, structurally and thematically The Choir Boats is right in the centre of the Tolkien tradition: it's full of prophesied quests, long journeys, evil forces, worlds at stake, the discovery of strange and new powers in everyday people, and a series of objects to acquire and places to reach before the narrative can progress--and this is only the first of a trilogy.  It might be wearing a frock coat--and a quite accurate cut of frock coat at that, since Rabuzzi has a doctorate in European history--but The Choir Boats is quest fantasy, through and through.

This isn't to say that a lot of those Napoleonic trappings aren't exciting and interesting stuff.  The magic system is almost entirely mathematical, existing in calculations and algebraic arcs, which is a really nice touch: the math-magic both reinforces the slight steampunk feel and makes the magic feel more concrete, less out of step with the industry and rationalism of the setting.  It's more Ada Lovelace, less Galadriel, and it's a great fit with the time and place.  So is the costume and presentation of the initial primary antagonist, The Cretched Man, whose tall hat, long coat, and demonic hunting dogs manage to evoke both Jack the Ripper and the Hound of the Baskervilles.  And for once, the long delays in travel that every quest fantasy seemingly needs to include have a decent explanation: tides, and the availability of ships in and out of London, South Africa, and parts more unknown.

It also grapples with some of the pitfalls of a 19^th-century setting: namely, the question of how contemporaneous attitudes to race, gender, and class stack up to the modern reader's, and how to balance that desire for strict accuracy with characters actually accessible to the reader.  Rabuzzi includes a spread of non-white, non-European characters, from the decidedly brown-skinned inhabitants of the extra-dimensional continent of Yount to merchant Barnabas McDoon's Indian ex-fiancee, lost to him because of his (uncle?)'s own racial prejudices, to an emancipated family of former American slaves living in poverty in London.  All of these characters are drawn with satisfying amounts of agency, given their social positions: Maggie, the daughter of an ex-slave mother, works as a housemaid and is isolated not just because of her poverty, but her skin; she's still a mathematical prodigy and possesses some measure of magic.  McDoon's former fiancée runs into social trouble because he jilts her, but she's not cast out of her family, blamed, or treated like a fallen woman; her family, when they arrive on the scene, lashes out quite rightfully at McDoon, and he takes responsibility for his actions.  Female characters--McDoon's niece Sally, Maggie, and a good spread of secondary players--carry their rightful share of the narrative, knowing things that the male characters don't, working side by side with them, and receiving their respect, all while recognizing or skirting the social conventions of the time.  Rabuzzi does a tidy job at acknowledging the gap between the era's social ethics and our own and bridging it without compromising the integrity of the setting and period.

The stumbling blocks in The Choir Boats are in the execution: in taking Tolkienian fantasy as a structural inspiration, it's unfortunately also dragged home the drawbacks of that genre.  Frequent blocks of exposition on the world or the characters' internal thoughts, a somewhat wandering path for their quest, and muddied goals, which aren't always at the forefront of the narrative, make it hard to keep a sense of tension or stakes.  It's an issue enhanced by a not-yet-developed sense of what to narrate over and what to actually demonstrate blow-by-blow: frequently, actually interesting and pertinent plot points are rushed over in narrative, handed in summary to the reader, while incidental subplots or footnotes of conversations are presented in full.  Whenever a good head of tension, of stakes, of leaning forward into the book to find out what happens is built up, it deflates quickly thereafter, mired down in exposition.  Characters' emotional reactions are also narrated over, which makes it hard to really feel jubilant, afraid, engaged with them for the entire length of the book.  In a novel whose inciting incidents involve the kidnapping of a child by dark forces, this is worrisome.

On the whole, the weaker points of The Choir Boats aren't the integrity of the ideas or the narrative choices made--and definitely not the design, as ChiZine Publications puts out impeccably professional, beautifully-designed books--but the stumbles you get when a new author's still finding their feet.  If flawed, it's a first novel that's got definite ideas about where it wants to go; Rabuzzi's work three or four novels down the line, when it's mature and confident, should be something to look forward to.

Nicole Kornher-Stace's Desideria is a dark and rather untraditional second-world Gothic, set in some indeterminate time period with echoes of both the Victorian and the Renaissance.  It's a book about liminal spaces: a city where the names are French and Christianity exists, but which is nonetheless entirely fictional; a madhouse full of the not-really-mad, guarded by not-really-warders; and, of course, the theatre.  It's this emphasis on between-spaces, things that simultaneously are and aren't and the pulling-apart of those two, that makes Desideria so compelling.

That, and Kornher-Stace's ornately-turned prose, which hits the best of both worlds: both stylistically gorgeous on a sentence-by-sentence level and transparent enough to not get between the reader and the story.  The style of Desideria really is ornament: it enhances what's already there, and the effect is something like reading Sarah Monette or (I'm assured) Barbara Hambly: noticing the reveling in the shape and sound of words, the twists of sentences, the vividness of details until the story sucks you back in and you're down the well again.

Structurally, Desideira is also both intricate and ambitious: a present-day thread--wherein an amnesiac Ange St. Loup is confined in the worst of all pre-moral treatment madhouses, and slowly works to discover her identity--frames the story of her life as an actress in the poor theatre Lady Minerva, and nested inside that is the script of the last play they performed before Ange leapt out the window of the burning Lady Minerva.  While the setup is perhaps unnecessarily slow, spending a little too long wandering the madhouse before getting into the mystery of who, what, and why, once the machine of the plot gets running it produces incredible curious tension: each bit of the puzzle creeps in quietly, and there's an audible click just before the end as it all comes together.  Kornher-Stace knows how to feed the curiosity of the reader just enough so they feel there's progress being made on the mystery but still keep looking for more.

When it all comes together the reveal is perhaps too obvious and explanatory: the book insists on stating what we've, of necessity, already figured out, which takes a little of the fun out of the equation and deflates some of the thematic resonance partially built up between the three narratives: thematic resonance that could have been bolstered and explored a little more.  Stating the explanation for what happened--and that it's all that happened--shuts down the sense of mystery and excitement around the plot a little too much, but that's a more than forgiveable issue in a first novel.

Desideria, on the whole, takes on something very difficult and exact and pulls it off in a way that's absorbing, exciting, intellectually fascinating, emotionally true and well-crafted, bobbles and all.  I'd recommend this wholeheartedly to fans of Sarah Monette, Catherynne M. Valente, and Caitlin R. Kiernan as definitely an author to watch.