Booklog 31/2018 - Rod Duncan: Unseemly Science - Fall of the gas-Lit Empire #2

[jacey]

I read the first Elizabeth Barnabus book some time ago, but I was surprised how much of it I'd retained in my mind when I started in on the sequel. Post revolution the country is split into two, roughly north and south with the south ruled by aristocrats, and the repressed north very puritan-like. Elizabeth Barnabus, brought up in a travelling circus in the south, has fled to the north to escape being sold to the Duke of Northampton. Women have no standing in northern society, so - a mistress of disguise - she leads a double life, as both herself and her own invented brother, taking commissions as a private detective. In this book she's running from the law as the north and south prepare to sign an extradition treaty and begin to round up all the exiles in preparation for sending them home, something likely to be the death of most of them. Elizabeth gets mixed up with a charity that hides secrets, follows the trail of ice thieves and ends up discovering a world of bodysnatching and unseemly experimentation. I enjoyed this enough to go straight on to the third book in the series: The Custodian of Marvels.