Stephen Hunt and the British steampunk imagination

Stephen Hunt’s Jackelian books form a secondary-world steampunk fantasy sequence of airships, revolution, strange machines, ancient powers, class tension, political lunacy and adventure. The kingdom of Jackals is not Victorian Britain with the serial numbers filed off. It is its own country, with its own institutions, and a great deal of trouble brewing under the floorboards.

Three details tend to stay with readers. Jack Cloudie is effectively Hornblower with airships, following a workhouse boy into the ranks of the Royal Aerostatical Navy. The world includes Mechancia, a civilisation of more-human-than-human steam-driven robots. And the realm itself is helped along by vast Transaction Engines, steam-driven punch-card computers that quietly administer the kingdom and occasionally think for themselves.