#Steampunk Friday--The Janus Affair and Two-Book Giveaway

The quick commercial message: Redemption, a new vampire romance-apocalyptic-mashup is being featured at the Reading on the Wild Side blog today--go over and enter for another chance to win the Amazon gift card or one of the Redemption giveaways.

Now...it's Friday, I started a new dent in my TBR pile yesterday--thanks for entering! So, what shall we do today...Let's look at a new steampunk!

Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris started their Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences series last year with Phoenix Rising. It was a riot, with a steel-corseted (figuratively if not literally) secret agent Eliza Braun being unhappily (at first) teamed up with mousy archivist Wellington Books. Talk about an odd couple! But, like many odd couples, they're very entertaining. So I'm looking forward to the second book in the series, The Janus Affair, which came out reccently. I should add here that I'm a really fast reader...normally...but for some reason I can't read steampunk quickly, which is why I don't read more of it. I find it a really entertaining genre, and I feel kind of ashamed that I let my schedule dictate my reading, but...there it is.

Anyway, I have an extra copy of both books in this series, so I'll be giving away the set today--both Phoenix Rising and The Janus Affair. Read on to learn about both books.

ABOUT PHOENIX RISING: Evil is most assuredly afoot—and Britain’s fate rests in the hands of an alluring renegade . . . and a librarian. These are dark days indeed in Victoria’s England. Londoners are vanishing, then reappearing, washing up as corpses on the banks of the Thames, drained of blood and bone. Yet the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences—the Crown’s clandestine organization whose bailiwick is the strange and unsettling—will not allow its agents to investigate. Fearless and exceedingly lovely Eliza D. Braun, however, with her bulletproof corset and a disturbing fondness for dynamite, refuses to let the matter rest . . . and she’s prepared to drag her timorous new partner, Wellington Books, along with her into the perilous fray. For a malevolent brotherhood is operating in the deepening London shadows, intent upon the enslavement of all Britons. And Books and Braun—he with his encyclopedic brain and she with her remarkable devices—must get to the twisted roots of a most nefarious plot . . . or see England fall to the Phoenix!

ABOUT THE JANUS AFFAIR: Evildoers beware Retribution is at hand, thanks to Britain's best-kept secret agents. Certainly no strangers to peculiar occurrences, agents Wellington Books and Eliza Braun are nonetheless stunned to observe a fellow passenger aboard Britain's latest hypersteam train suddenly vanish in a dazzling bolt of lightning. They soon discover this is not the only such disappearance . . . with each case going inexplicably unexamined by the Crown. The fate of England is once again in the hands of an ingenious archivist paired with a beautiful, fearless lady of adventure. And though their foe be fiendishly clever, so then is Mr. Books . . . and Miss Braun still has a number of useful and unusual devices hidden beneath her petticoats.

So, ready to read some steampunk? You know the drill--leave a comment for an entry. Have you read any steampunk? If so, what do you like about it? I marvel at the sheer cleverness of it; I can't imagine ever writing something like that. As always, extra entries for blog follow, Twitter follow @Suzanne_Johnson, and a Tweet or Retween, so four entries possible. Now get steamy!