High Vaultage by Chris and Jen Sugden (book review)
When an idea switches media formats, there is always a question as to whether the adaptation will be as successful in the new format. The idea behind ‘High Vaultage’ originated in audio podcasts under the name of ‘Victoriocity’ and here is translated into a print format.
The setting for both podcasts and novel is 1887 and an alternative England. The Industrial Revolution has got out of hand. With the development of mechanisation, most of the southern third of England has been built over and is being constantly redeveloped by the Brunel Corporation. Queen Victoria is more machine than human as many of her parts have been replaced by clockwork.
The principal characters are a familiar pairing of a male ex-police inspector and a female come to London to be a crime reporter and together run a detective agency. Archibold Fleet is the male partner. The reason he left the police is because the authorities are unsure if his status. He died in the course of his duties but was revived by the Royal Medical Engineers, those who keep Victoria functioning. Clara Entwistle, from Yorkshire, is the other half of the agency. Their office is an upstairs room of a seedy coffee shop. As par for the course, they do not have many clients…yet! Mostly, they deal with small cases but they allow Clara to continue to write a crime column for a newspaper.
The big story of the day concerns bank strongrooms being broken into but nothing being actually stolen, though some of the boxes had been tampered with. Fleet and Clara, though, have lesser mysteries to deal with, such as finding the landlady’s dog. Clara has just wrapped up a case of fraudulent identity when they are approached by Kathleen Price. She is a scavenger working on the frozen waters of the Thames and has seen a man being kidnapped. The man in question has been waiting nightly for a woman who doesn’t turn up. The hunt for the missing man and/or his girlfriend via an advert in the newspaper Clara works for leads them to discover that he is a Brunel employee and that he is not the only one who has gone missing.
As their investigations continue, more about the workings of the Brunel Corps are revealed. Not all the developments they are making are as benevolent as they would like people to think and there is a power struggle going on at the top of the Corps.
Anyone who has enjoyed the podcasts will probably like this book as they will be familiar with the landscape. While the premise of engineering works getting out of hand and covering the landscape is at times amusing, it is also terrifying as takes away from the populace any sense of ownership in the place where they live and adds the fear that their home will have disappeared next time they come home from work. At the centre of this, there is a decent mystery-thriller, but there are too many distractions, probably inserted for an added humour which does not work for all readers. A tighter script would be far more effective. While listeners to the podcasts may be induced to read the book, it doesn’t work the other way round for this reader.
It is only a minor thing but it is very off-putting that the authors and/or proofreader doesn’t know the difference between a plane and a plain. This is a problem with allowing spell-checkers loose on prose.
Pauline Morgan
January 2025
(pub: Gollancz, 2024. 383 page hardback. Price: £22.00. ISBN: 978-1-399-60416-1)
check out website: www.gollancz.co.uk