Steampunk Leap Year / Steampunk New Year (Lucci)

Steampunk Leap Year
by Jessica Lucci (2019)

Steampunk New Year
by Jessica Lucci (2020)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

These two steampunk collections were included in a recent eSpec Books Kickstarter campaign. I'm still fairly new to Steampunk, as a reader as well as a writer, so I can appreciate short stories that hit different aspects of the genre.

I read the two of them back to back, each one having 12 stories or poems, and all quite short. (My experience with the second book might've suffered for this.) In the first book, the stories should've corresponded in some way (some more obvious than others) to the month of the year. In the second book, I couldn't tell if this was still an overall theme or not.

The stories in the first book were:

  • Steampunk Leap Year: on old man kidnaps a young baby. It's the old year and the baby new year. The old man has a mechanical heart which is supposed to be removed and implanted in the baby.
  • Stupid Cupid: Cupid has a mechanized harness and if you're shot with his arrows you may find love or you may bleed out. At this point, we are 1/3 of the way through the book. The rest of the tales will be shorter.
  • Mr. Caibleir: Until I just typed that, it didn't dawn on my that it was 'cobbler', or for that matter, close to 'Keebler'. It's a retelling of the cobbler and the elves, but with Leprechauns and a downer of an ending. The steampunk element feels almost tacked on at the end, almost replaceable with a different ending.
  • Steamy Stpring: The steampunk elements are there along with flying mutated pigs, Persephone and Hades. Weird.
  • Each Other and Your Mother: A lot of candles and blood. I have no idea what was going on in this one.
  • Summer Vacation: The idyllic town of Gustover has robots taking care of everything so the townpeople can enjoy their leisure. They have two problems though: children getting underfoot during summer vacation (and the school marm won't reopen the school), and the rats from developing the town. An absurdist pied piper retelling that takes care of some of the town's problems.
  • Parade: A photographer at a parade trying to get a picture of the young girl who is dressed as the Statue of Liberty. I read this on the moring subway so maybe I missed something here.
  • Last Lobster Rolls: A submarine and lobsters. What could go wrong?
  • Silver and Orange: A girl with a magical wand (or a steampunk-y wand) and an inversion of Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater.
  • Cheaper By the Dozen: A man buys a rose every day. The florist tells him that they are cheaper by the dozen. That refrain will come back later.
  • Over the River and Through the Woods: A poem, which could be sung to the title tune, which I know thanks to the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving special. This version has "hover the smokestack and blast the past..."
  • Steampunk Little Christmas: Amy is in 5th grade and she's embarrased by her little clockwork sister.

Overall, I enjoyed more than I didn't, and there were only a couple that I just didn't get. (I can't say I couldn't get through any of them since they're so short, but they might've left me scratching my head. Not enough to dwell on them though.)

I didn't fare as well on the second book and, in retrospect, I probably shouldn't have read them back to back. It's lighter on the steampunk elements and doesn't keep to the monthly format of the first book.

The lead story has 3 girls, A, B, and C, along with dragon fire and steam trains, and is a retelling of Cinderella, which the exception that the Queen is looking for a bride for the princess. The next has a submarine which becomes and airship which gets caught by a black hole and leads the crew on a trip to eternity that ends a little abruptly. The next is about humans and dragons coexisting in the Scottish Highlands until Baron Von Rectom ruins it. A poem (or song) Thundersnow follows. And then more. I won't go through them all because I've forgotten a lot about them. There's a Chupacabra Choo-Choo with a character named Chupie. A coronavirus poem. A trio of guys who could be the 3 Stooges (and who fare as well as you might expect.) It ends with a "Festivus" story as a real holiday, not just people celebrating it from TV. It took me a couple mentions to realize that Santina was actually Santa (no last name). Jack Frost and the Grinch have supporting roles in this Festivus Eve tale.

The one thing I noticed is that men don't fare well in the books with the exception of Father Time (the old new year) in the first book, and the Grinch in the last tale. The rest seemed to have sad or bad endings or just weren't nice people in the first place. Que sera. There's probably a reason for it.

Quick reads. On to the next books from one Kickstarter or another before I get back to the Book Club pick.

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