As you can imagine, we got a lot requests to review books here at The Steampunk Chronicle. At any given time there are usually a dozen or so books spread out amongst our correspondents.  Occasionally an editor gets a chance to pick up one of these books when there is no one available to review it. As editor of the Crafts and Mods section, we don't get a lot of books as you can imagine so the opportunity to review something was sort of a treat. As fate would have it its a children's book, a chapter book in fact. Despite being accused of a childlike sense of wonder from time to time, I would have to say this would not be my first
choice for a book review by far. I had been chomping at the bit to review Dreams of Steam II by Kimberly Richardson but alas, my teaching duties as of late have kept the good professor quite busy. Which is quite fine, one of our fine correspondents did a quite adequate job of reviewing it in the last issue.

So first and foremost, I discovered that I had a bit ignorant of exactly what a chapter book was. So like any good academic, I decided to research it. What I found was that chapter books were intended to be books consisting of short chapters of prose. The length of a chapter is supposedly designed for younger readers that might not have the patience to continue through a longer chapter. It also tends to use prose rather than pictures to tell the majority of its story. With that in mind, I dove into the book. Its worth noting that this is the first in an intended series of books called The Jupiter Chronicles. Despite the use of the word "chronicle" in its name,  It has no relation to the Steampunk Chronicle itself.

If I had to summarize, I would say that this story is a simplistic mashup of A Wrinkle In Time and A Princess of Mars. The heroes of the story are a brother sister pair, Callie and Ian, that have lost their father through mysterious circumstances. Callie is spunk and courageous and Ian is a tinkerer of sorts. They manage to stumble upon a telescope of their fathers which is able to turn
into a spaceship and transport them to Jupiter. They in short order discover that they there father is actually a prince of the Royal Family of Jupiter and has been imprisoned by an Evil Martian Overlord. Through clever thinking, bravery, and a little help from a clockwork man called Stinky Frank, they are able to find their father, overthrow the Evil Martian Overlord and return home
to reunite their loving mother and father. All in the span of 55 pages spread out of 14 chapters. Yes, as you might have guessed, it moves quite fast. But again, that is how its designed! A reader of 6-9 years old would find this quite fascinating and with that in mind, I think its of appropriate length and pacing.  I especially liked the one page of science facts that served as occasionally served as intermissions between the chapters. They give the reader a bit of historical fact on some aspect of the story such as the inventor of the Telescope of the size of Jupiter and its number of moons. The writer, Leonardo Ramirez even manages to tip his hat to the Patron Scientist of Steampunk, Nikola Tesla long the way.

The book does feel like it needs a slight bit of polish though. But that could easily be explained by the fact that the book is written to a substantially lower reading level than I am accustomed too.  But don't let that deter you from picking this up for you kids. I actually find myself quite curious as to the sequel. The book has sparked my childlike sense of wonder again it seems.

All in all, its quite an entertaining little book and I encourage parents to pick it up for their kids once its released.  As always, though, I recommend that you read whatever you are going to put in front of your kids to make sure it meets your approval.

You can get more information on the release schedule for this book at the authors blog located at http://leonardoverse.com

Vernard Martin, aka The Professor, is Crafts editor for the Steampunk Chronicle and co-Cogspinner for the SPC website. He spends his day time hours pondering the mysteries of the Aether at the Emory Center for Comprehensive Informatics. His night time hours are dedicated to the enlightenment of students at local universities.