Reader's Review: "A Dodge, A Twist, A Tobacconist", by Sophronia Belle Lyon

*This is a review I wrote before I'd actually started my blog... but now that I'm doing book reviews, I decided to repost it.

Rose and the Campbell Clan the leaders of a secret society? Oliver Twist an eccentric inventor ahead of his time? Mowgli and Bagheera tracking a villain through the streets of London?
What if the characters from your favorite Victorian-era classics crossed paths with one another? What if the heroes from those books had to work together to defeat a singular villain from another story?

Such is the case with "A Dodge, A Twist, and A Tobacconist." Sophronia Lyon cleverly matches characters from the works of Dickens, Stevenson, Kipling, and even Alcott, all in the setting of a London "crime drama" that will have the reader guessing from the very start. Combined with a well-placed "steampunk" vibe, Sophronia maintains the integrity of these well-loved authors, while remixing them into an entirely new adventure in the high-action, well-developed style of "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen." She not only adopts the style of the authors, but continues their "legacy" of social and moral values. The issues raised in this adventure are treated with the same conviction as the ones who personally witnessed the corruption and wrote about it.

I adored the old books, and reading this one was like a reunion of them all. The original authors would be proud to see their characters treated with such tactful respect, in a novel that also deals with the same social evils the authors themselves tried to speak against.

Sophronia has begun excellently, and I look forward to a continuation of the series!


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