Owldance by David Lee Summers
Published in 2014, Owldance is perhaps a bit recent to be called a classic but in this case I’ll make an exception. The American setting of this steampunk novel by David Lee Summers makes it a delightful change from the usual settings in Victorian London, especially since it’s set in my own Southwest. The primary characters are an interesting departure from the typical denizens of the genre : Sheriff Ramon Morales of Socorro, New Mexico, and Fatemeh Karimi, a Persian healer who has recently arrived in America. Ramon is an honest sheriff who stands up to corrupt officials and is forced to flee for his life. Fatemeh encounters the suspicion of the locals who view her as some kind of sorceress. Unbeknownst to the protagonists, there’s also mysterious alien called Legion, working behind the scenes by possessing the bodies of humans. Of course there’s the obligatory clockwork in the form of owls and wolves, created by an eccentric scientist. To add to the excitement, airships from the Russian Empire have just invaded the United States. This is the first book in the Clockwork Legion Series which includes Lightning Wolves and the Brazen Shark. The titles alone make them worth checking out. For someone with a day job (more correctly a night job) as an astronomer, Summers is quite a prolific author. I highly recommend this book.