Here are 100 books that Infernal Devices fans have personally recommended if you like
Infernal Devices.
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I’ve been reading fantasy since before I could read (thanks, Mom and Dad!). I certainly never outgrew my love of fairy tales. But over the years, I discovered I also love historical romance. Then, I stumbled across books that combined the two. They were the best of both worlds. The comfort of a well-fitted waistcoat with the whimsy of an enchanted jewel. Naturally, I gravitated to writing what I loved: books full of magic and manners, castles and balls, romance and intrigue.
When encountering a spinster alone at a ball, there is no excuse to forget proper manners, even—or perhaps especially—if one is a vampire. Or werewolf. I adored the voice in this book, which gave that Jane Austen feel, except brimming with humor.
The characters enchanted me as they balanced between high-society manners and the reality of living with (or being) supernatural creatures. The interactions between solidly practical Alexia and exasperated Lord Maccon made it a romance I couldn’t help but root for.
Even if Alexia was soulless, you can’t convince me her werewolf wasn’t her soulmate. A perfect blend of Victorian London and paranormal romance.
Alexia Tarabotti is labouring under a great many social tribulations. First, she has no soul. Second, she's a spinster whose father is both Italian and dead. Third, she was rudely attacked by a vampire, breaking all standards of social etiquette.
Where to go from there? From bad to worse apparently, for Alexia accidentally kills the vampire - and then the appalling Lord Maccon (loud, messy, gorgeous, and werewolf) is sent by Queen Victoria to investigate.
With unexpected vampires appearing and expected vampires disappearing, everyone seems to believe Alexia responsible. Can she figure out what is actually happening to London's high…
I write fantasy novels, including A College of Magics, River Rats, and When the King Comes Home. With Patricia C. Wrede, I wrote half of the Kate and Cecy series: Sorcery and Cecelia, The Grand Tour, and The Mislaid Magician.
Agent of the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities, Fatma el-Sha'arawi is the spectacularly well-dressed protagonist tasked with saving the world (again) in an alternate 1912 Cairo. This award-winning novel awed me with its detail and invention. What I loved most was the way the world building relegated the British Empire to relative unimportance. Come to think of it, I loved the Ministry library almost as much.
Included in NPR’s Favorite Sci-Fi And Fantasy Books Of The Past Decade (2011-2021) A Nebula Award Winner A Ignyte Award Winner A Compton Crook Award for Best New Novel Winner A Locus First Novel Award Winner A RUSA Reading List: Fantasy Winner A Hugo Award Finalist A World Fantasy Award Finalist A NEIBA Book Award Finalist A Mythopoeic Award Finalist A Dragon Award Finalist A Best of 2021 Pick in SFF for Amazon A Best of 2021 Pick in SFF for Kobo
Nebula, Locus, and Alex Award-winner P. Djèlí Clark goes full-length for the first time in his dazzling debut…
I grew up on a steady book diet of child detectives, fairy tales involving monsters in the woods, and historical fiction about the black plague. The same themes go through the books I love to read and write, transporting me with world-building set in realms or historical settings with technology so strange it could be fantasy. Characters are shaped by the world around them and the more perilous the world, the more it challenges the characters. If there are monsters, I’m in.
Boneshaker is set in an alternate Seattle where a rampant machine unearthed toxic gas that turns people into zombies, and the only way to contain this disaster was to wall off the city. What I love about Boneshaker is how people remain defiantly close to the city and move on with their lives despite the toxic rain, the zombies clawing on the walls, and, even more so, the people who take it further and travel through the ruins of the once great city in an airship, or, if they’re daring, on foot.
Better pack your guns and your wits when exploring this cityscape!
At the start of the Civil War, a Russian mining company commissions a great machine to pave the way from Seattle to Alaska and speed up the gold rush that is beating a path to the frozen north. Inventor Leviticus Blue creates the machine, but on its first test run it malfunctions, decimating Seattle's banking district and uncovering a vein of Blight Gas that turns everyone who breathes it into the living dead. Sixteen years later Briar, Blue's widow, lives in the poor neighborhood outside the wall that's been built around the uninhabitable city. Life is tough with a ruined…
I find joy in niches and steampunk is not cut from the ordinary cloth. I was originally challenged to produce a story that incorporated magic into steampunk. The resulting character, Kassandra Leyden who can speak to the dead, brought to life an alternate history where a deadly plague made the British Empire emigrate to the Americas and begin anew. The style and fashion of steampunk in modifying the ordinary appeals to the maker in me. I am an avid renfaire attendee and create and sell garb, which now includes steampunk elements. I hope you enjoy these choices and discover what steampunk has to offer as a genre.
The first in the Newbury and Hobbs series finds our intrepid pair of investigators trying to tie together an airship crash, a mysterious plague among the less fortunate of London, a spate of murders that leaves Scotland Yard clueless and the reappearing ghost of a police officer. A London on the verge of a technological leap forward provides a backdrop for a Holmesian investigation. There’s plenty more ahead in the series for those who enjoy this one.
Get ready to follow dazzling young writer George Mann to a London unlike any you've ever seen and into an adventure you will never forget, in The Affinity Bridge.
Welcome to the bizarre and dangerous world of Victorian London, a city teetering on the edge of revolution. Its people are ushering in a new era of technology, dazzled each day by unfamiliar inventions. Airships soar in the skies over the city, while ground trains rumble through the streets and clockwork automatons are programmed to carry out menial tasks in the offices of lawyers, policemen, and journalists.
I’m a cyclist and a cycling fan. I’ve commuted through the Surrey countryside by tricycle and explored the cycling city of Cambridge by bike. I’ve stood at the side of the road to cheer on the Olympic road race, the Tour de France and the Tour of Britain, and the World Road Cycling Championships. I kept on cycling until I was eight and a half months pregnant and was reading a biography of Beryl Burton when I went into labour. There aren’t a lot of cycling novels out there, but I’m proud of having added one to that small number.
For me, cycling has meant freedom. This book celebrates the bicycle as a tool for women’s emancipation. Microcosm Publishing has a strong track record (pun intended) in celebrating feminism, cycling, and the intersection of the two, and this is a particularly good example.
Set in a universe that seems to be just a jump away from our own, about a century and a half ago, it’s insightful on matters of class and wealth, too. I particularly enjoyed all the little details of fashion. I found myself rooting hard for the heroine in her struggle to ride a bike, not just competitively, but at all. And I was charmed by a love story I wasn’t expecting.
Emmeline Escot knows that she was born to ride in Seren’s cutthroat velocipede races. The only problem: She’s female in a world where women lead tightly laced lives. Emmeline watches her twin brother gain success as a professional racing jockey while her own life grows increasingly narrow. Ever more stifled by rules, corsets, and her upcoming marriage of convenience to a brusque stranger, Emmy rebelswith stunning consequences. Can her dream to race survive scandal, scrutiny, and heartbreak?
I grew up with books like Dinotopia, Goosebumps choose your own adventures, Harry Potter, and Lord of the Rings, growing me into a lover of intricate world-building. I've always been passionate about magic and science. Interweaving magic into everyday life is part of who I am and I love seeing it in writing. After writing ten fantasy detective novels, buckets of short mysteries, and over a decade of world-building I know a passionate writer when I read it. As an avid audiobook consumer, organizer, and progenitor for the Logan Writers Festival, and twice-a-week professional Dungeon Master, I love the way these books intricately lay down their clues in the places they didn’t think we’d look.
This book by Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris is one that you skip other books in your TBR pile for! It’s impossible to put it down. The story takes place in an alternate Victorian era where the world is powered by steam and magic. The plot is filled with so many threads of clues and mysteries weave you into the world and before you know it you’re as tangled as the characters. The secret agent and medium characters are brilliant, and their chemistry is just amazing. The world-building is superb, the steampunk universe is so rich and fascinating. The balance of mystery, fantasy, and adventure are just perfect. If you love steampunk and mystery, you have to read this book! It's simply fantastic!
There's something rotten in the city of London. Women are disappearing - young and old, rich and poor, from all walks of society. The only thing they have in common is their belief that women also deserve the vote. It's up to the Ministry of Peculiar Occurences to find out why these women are vanishing, but agents Books and Braun have their own challenges. There's a turncoat with nefarious plans within the Ministry itself, and the reappearance of an old flame means their growing friendship is threatened. To say nothing of the queen of the underworld, tassassins-attacking-on-ornithopters, and a conspiracy…
Like most authors, my love for writing grew from a love for reading. In particular, I’ve always loved stories with captivating storyteller voices. There’s a huge variety of subgenres in fantasy—with endless combinations of imaginative worlds, magic, heroes, monsters, and villains—but at the end of the day, what draws me in are fantasy novels with bold voices that are clearly in control of the story and immediately take you to another place. Those are the types of novels I like to read, and always aim to write.
Blaylock may be an unknown name to many traditional fantasy readers, and if that’s the case for you, considerThe Elfin Ship as your gateway drug to his work. This fantasy novel is very much in the vein of The Hobbit in that it has dwarves, elves, and a good bit of pipe smoking, but it does so with Blaylock’s one-of-a-kind voice that shines with understated American wit and humor. It also has airships! (Which crossover into Blaylock’s more well-known steampunk works.) The adventure is both action-filled and hilarious, never taking itself too seriously but at the same time embracing the traditional tropes that make fantasy so fun to read.
A trilogy sets sail with a novel that’s “charming, light-hearted and funny . . . Feels a little like The Hobbit or The Wind in the Willows” (Fantasy Literature).
James P. Blaylock’s debut novel The Elfin Ship has become a classic of whimsical fantasy. With echoes of Kenneth Graham and Mark Twain, it’s a gentle, eccentric, and hilarious novel that will delight readers of all ages.
Trading with the elves used to be so simple. Every year Master Cheeser Jonathan Bing would send his very best cheeses downriver to traders who would eventually return with Elfin wonders for the people…
After experimenting with fictional digitized worlds for the greater part of a decade, my writing journey has led me to discover a new, never-before-tried flavour of science fiction. My name is Louise Blackwick and I am the creator of Neon Science-Fiction – a subgenre of sci-fi that combines stylistic, thematic, and aesthetic elements of Post-Cyberpunk, Cyber noir, and Nanopunk. The reading list I compiled includes five science fiction stories that both influenced and facilitated the birth of this fresh and hopefully thought-provoking new genre. I hope Neon Sci-Fi can be a stimulating new addition for science fiction readers and authors alike.
As one of the founding fathers of Nanopunk, Neal Stephenson’s writings form a straightforward bridge between Postcyberpunk and Neon Science-Fiction. His novel is a collection of exotic technologies like matter compilers, smart paper, immunity-enhancing particles, and foldable transportable mech-horses. Eventually, I found myself inspired to create exotic tech of my own (e.g. foods, arts, weapons, and technologies fully based on “Dark”, an unconstructed area of “empty space” featured somewhat heavily in my neon sci-fi novel). Stephenson’s novel also depicts an extremely globalized future, founded on molecular nanotech, rapidly assembled usable goods, and socio-cultural division. The title’s allusion to a “Diamond Age” fully based on nanotechnology (diamonds can be assembled from individual carbon atoms) is a complex commentary on economics and how an object loses its value through mass production.
And who could be smaller or more insignificant than poor Little Nell - an orphan girl alone and adrift in a world of Confucian Law, Neo-Victorian values and warring nanotechnology?
Well, not quite alone. Because Nell has a friend, of sorts. A guide, a teacher, an armed and unarmed combat instructor, a book and a computer: the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer is all these and much much more. It is illicit, magical, dangerous.
I’ve been fascinated by fantasy and sci-fi books since childhood – ever since I read Harry Potter and my parents took me to Disneyland Park. My parents had a giant library, and they used to encourage me to buy books and read them. I enjoy reading books that mix genres with unexpected twists and turns, and I am always on the hunt for a good story to enjoy and review.
I was hooked from page one and finished reading the book in just a few days. Although this is a complicated story, the description was vivid and clear. The plot was fast-paced and full of actions that will keep you on the edge of your seat most of the time.
“The expert combination of immersive storytelling, strong characters, and well-woven mixture of speculative and steampunk elements makes for an unforgettable experience.” – The Prairies Book Review
Heroes only get better with age.
Forty years after The Great War that overthrew an Empire, a former war hero, Ellaria Moonstone, has discovered a new threat to the World she helped save.
When the Peace King of the Free Cities goes missing, Ellaria uncovers a plot to overthrow the tenuous republic. Fearing that a powerful being called a Sagean Luminary has returned to claim the throne, Ellaria sends for help from old allies…
Growing up, I loved discovering how things work. That led me to a career in engineering, but I never left a certain quirkiness behind. Why else would I have raised llamas for thirty years? Or loved the stories I find in science fiction? Especially books that start in a real place occupied by believable people, then demand a leap of faith, a reach beyond what's known today. We have so much to learn – about planets and people – that possibilities spiral out into the universe. I hope you enjoy the books on my list as much as I have.
What if humanity rocketed to the moon in the 19th Century? Then surely Mark Twain, aka Sam Clemens, would have gone to seek his fortune. I've never found a more compelling image of travel over and under the moon's surface. These adventures let me discover technology that fits the place and the time. One of my favorites is steam power – not as anachronistic as you might guess. I'm excited by real-life discoveries of water ice in lunar craters, possible fuel for future astronauts.
Twain's style is captured wonderfully, something I hadn't expected. He must keep from blowing himself to kingdom come as science and human nature mix in a delightful stew of troubles. I'm happy to see Twain may solve some of NASA's upcoming problems too.
In an alternate 19th century, young Samuel Clemens sets out for the mining camps of America’s wildest frontier: the Moon. Travel with Sam and his partner Calvin as they venture into the desolate, deadly wastes of the Mare Imbrium and the Montes Caucasus, in search of wonders, adventure, and a fortune in precious water ice. This is Prospectors!, the opening salvo in the epic saga of Mark Twain on the Moon, as told by the alternate Mark Twain himself.
"You will soon forget that it isn't Mr. Twain" -Melvin H. Wilson, Jr.
