I Read Books: Jack Cloudie

Jack Cloudie is the fifth in Stephen Hunt’s Jackelian* sequence, and in this one we find ourselves mostly in the desert land of Cassarabia. Womb mages use slave women to produce strange creatures and to introduce useful adaptions into bloodlines (their chants and spells are RNA sequences). Cassarabia has been ruled the Eternal Caliph, who united the empire, both politically and religiously, eradicating all but 100 sects of the true god. He has gone on to conquer the continent... except his ambition is stopped to the North where the Royal Aeronautical Navy of Jackals has defeated every attempt at invasion.

Now though Cassarabia has come under the sway of a new sect, who have gained power due to being able to create a non-flammable lifting gas to match that of the RAN. With it they can build an aerial fleet of their own. Cassarabian loyalists and a team of Jackelian Jack Cloudies (compare: Jack Tar, an 18th century name for sailors) must put down the upstart sect.

There’s some strange stuff about gender going on in the book. Without giving too much away, let me just say that many of the characters have somewhat regressive ideas; some change gender which the book treats in a neutral-to-sympathetic manner though other characters react with horror. And some are threatened with non-consensual gender change. Anyway, it’s all very complicated, but aware that this is a topic.

Read This: For more weird steampunk adventures
Don’t Read This: If the whole 18th century through a funhouse mirror isn’t for you, especially when it turns it’s gaze on a faux-Ottoman Empire.


* Previous reviews:
The Court of the Air
The Kingdom Beyond the Waves
Rise of the Iron Moon
Secrets of the Fire Sea