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Maurice Broaddus
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Pimp My Airship: A Naptown by Airship Novel Kindle Edition

by Maurice Broaddus (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 39 ratings
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Warning: Don’t Believe the Hype!

All the poet called Sleepy wants to do is spit his verses, smoke chiba, and stay off the COP’s radar—all of which becomes impossible once he encounters a professional protestor known as (120 Degrees of) Knowledge Allah. They soon find themselves on the wrong side of local authorities and have to elude the powers that be.

When young heiress Sophine Jefferson’s father is murdered, the careful life she’d been constructing for herself tumbles around her. She’s quickly drawn into a web of intrigue, politics and airships, joining with Sleepy and Knowledge Allah in a fight for their freedom. Chased from one end of a retro-fitted Indianapolis to the other, they encounter outlaws, the occasional circus, possibly a medium, and more outlaws. They find themselves in a battle much larger than they imagined: a battle for control of the country and the soul of their people.

The revolution will not be televised!
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    324 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publication date
    May 21, 2019
  5. File size
    3171 KB
  6. Page Flip
    Enabled
  7. Word Wise
    Enabled
  8. Enhanced typesetting
    Enabled
  9. See all details
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Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07PX3Y7B9
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 21, 2019
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 3171 KB
  • Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 324 pages
  • Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 1937009769
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 39 ratings

About the author

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Maurice Broaddus

Maurice Broaddus

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Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

An accidental teacher (at the Oaks Academy Middle School), an accidental librarian (the School Library Manager which part of the IndyPL Shared System), and a purposeful community organizer (resident Afrofuturist at the Kheprw Institute), his work has appeared in Magazine of SF&F, Lightspeed Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Asimov’s, and Uncanny Magazine, with some of his stories having been collected in The Voices of Martyrs. His novels include the urban fantasy trilogy, The Knights of Breton Court, the steampunk novel, Pimp My Airship, and the middle grade detective novel series, The Usual Suspects. As an editor, he’s worked on Dark Faith, Fireside Magazine, and Apex Magazine. His gaming work includes writing for the Marvel Super-Heroes, Leverage, and Firefly role-playing games as well as working as a consultant on Watch Dogs 2. Learn more about him at MauriceBroaddus.com.

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
39 global ratings
Witty, poignant steamfunk - so good.
5 Stars
Witty, poignant steamfunk - so good.
"It's time to change your nature." - (120 Degrees of) Knowledge AllahI really enjoyed this book!Maurice Broaddus captured the spirit of steampunk in a fascinating way through his take on steamfunk - taking the genre's juxtaposition of past, future, sensory overbigness, and the machine - with the common settings of darkness and color and rust and shine and drawing poignant and layered metaphors that are both deep and apparent at the same time.In that same spirit, one of the protagonists, (120 Degrees of) Knowledge Allah is now one of my favorite characters. And there are so many single lines that are great; rarely do I stop and hold my finger over a line, just absorbing. And that happened over and over with this book. (Sometimes even with an audible mmmmmm.)For readers of mine who are concerned with violence and horror and know that Apex is a horror publisher, there were some brief elements of graphic violence and steampunk horror, but nothing I couldn't handle. (The depictions of institutionalized oppression-related violence and mentions of specific incidents are generally more disturbing than the direct plot violence.) The storytelling can be abrupt in various ways, but that all felt in character with the genre and the world. This is a terrific book from a brilliant author and an impactful indie press. Worthy of your support as well as your enjoyment.I really enjoyed Pimp my Airship, and recommend it to anyone who loves a unique story in general, or specifically a fresh take on steampunk, afrofuturism, or political speculative fiction. In addition to the story being fun and often funny in between being sad or enraging, it was also powerful: I finished the book eager to get out and do things. In fact, my mind is racing with things to say, but since you can go read the book and join in, yourself, I'll leave it there.Thanks to the author and publisher for such a great adventure.
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Top reviews from the United States

Kelly Perry
5.0 out of 5 stars Must have!! Also great gift!
Reviewed in the United States on December 17, 2019
Verified Purchase
A must have for your library or the reader in your life!!
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John Goodrich
5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful Book of Resistance,
Reviewed in the United States on September 14, 2023
What I really enjoyed was that all the characters have distinctive and engaging voices, but never go so far as to be unbelievable or cartoonish. Everyone on the page breathes, and it's clear they all have back stories, even if you don't get them immediately. This makes PIMP MY AIRSHIP easy to get into, and pulls the reader along. You care about what's happening.

The two main characters come from different backgrounds, and they experience the society they are in very differently. And yet, when they meet, they have a common goal. It's a book about resistance to oppression, and the different ways the characters have of seeing it, engaging it, and defying it.

Five stars. Excellent book.
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Mary Soon Lee
4.0 out of 5 stars Steampunk, racial tensions, somewhat uneven but mostly good.
Reviewed in the United States on July 6, 2023
Verified Purchase
This steampunk novel drew me in quickly as it introduced Sleepy, a steam engineeer by day, poet and dreamer and chiba-smoker by night. The narrative alternates between Sleepy's perspective and that of Sophine, struggling to make her way as a scientist in a male-dominated world. I remained fond of Sleepy throughout, but didn't fully warm to Sophine.

Both Sleepy and Sophine are black (Sophine lighter-skinned than Sleepy) and the novel does an excellent job showing the bitterly racist society they live in, a vision of an America-that-might-have-been if Britain (Albion) still ruled most of it.

The title is great, albeit misleading. An airship appears only late and briefly.

Parts of the prose shone, yet I found many of the sentence fragments distracting. I don't object to sentence fragments in principle, but quite a few of these made me mentally hiccup as I worked to parse them.

I found the climax less compelling than the early parts of the story, though the epilogue pleased me. (Spoiler warning: it made me happy to see Sleepy performing poetry again.)

Three and a half out of five sleepy stars, rounded up for Sleepy.

About my reviews: I try to review every book I read, including those that I don't end up enjoying. The reviews are not scholarly, but just indicate my reaction as a reader, reading being my addiction. I am miserly with 5-star reviews; 4 stars means I liked a book very much; 3 stars means I liked it; 2 stars means I didn't like it (though often the 2-star books are very popular with other readers and/or are by authors whose other work I've loved).
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bex
5.0 out of 5 stars 5 star: Highly recommended, compelling read
Reviewed in the United States on May 28, 2019
Apex Books has been kind enough to let me have a digital ARC of Pimp My Airship by Maurice Broaddus. I hadn’t previously had the opportunity to read his work, but steampunk is one of the genres I tend to watch for as I like the feel of them. After reading this book, you can bet I will be looking for more of this author’s writing whenever I get the chance, because I really loved this book.

Now, what makes me love this book so much? Everything about it. It has an amazing world, compelling characters, and a great story. I felt more connection to Sophine than to Sleepy at first, but once I got more into the book and got to understand Sleepy better, he grew on me. I loved his attitude about his weight and his words. He isn’t someone who rushes into things, but does what he has to do.

The world is a bit different than the steampunk I’ve read before. It’s an alternate history that goes further back in time before deviating from the actual time and it’s set in what is central US in our world. Figuring out how the world was the same and how it was different was a fun layer of the piece, as it is never spelled out blatantly (a good thing, since doing so would have been a dreadful narrator background dump).

Now where this book really excels for me is the layers beneath the surface story. In the upper layer, we have interesting characters in a fictional world: Sleepy is thrust into an unexpected adventure by accident and Sophine is trying to deal with a tense family situation and make her own way in the world.

Although the world is fictional and it’s an alternate history, so much is still similar to our own. And this is what makes my heart and my brain break. I grew up white middle class. I wish race didn’t matter. But this book helps me understand how much even today my attitude is a privilege that so many people of color don’t have. I feel like I have more insight into how people can end up protesting in more extreme fashions no matter how peacefully they wish they could do so. And this reality is, to me, far more heartbreaking than the individual stories of Sophine and Sleepy and Knowledge Allah.

I’m not the type to hand out 5 star reviews like your favorite neighbor gives out Halloween candy. I’m more like the stingy old lady on the next block who turns the lights off and pretends not to be home. But this book–this book makes me want to hand out my best 80% dark European chocolate.

I strongly recommend this book to anyone who wants a great Steampunk-esque story and to anyone who wants to stretch their brain a bit. This story is such a great example of how quality speculative fiction can help people understand each other a little better. So regardless of your race or background, if you enjoy this kind of story–and especially if you like to have your world expanded–try this book.

Thank you, Apex, for allowing me to review it, and thank you Maurice Broaddus for having written such a compelling book.
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