The Bullet-Catcher's Daughter by Rod Duncan

The book’s title refers to the canny matriarch who rules Freedom Island – though only women are allowed to live freely there.

Yet, for all its swash and buckle, The Queen of All Crows is much more than a standard pirate romp. A huge testament to the author’s talent is his ability to suspend what one would normally take for granted about ‘modern’ warfare and pitch the reader into an alternative twenty-first century ruckus where pistol shots dent iron chimneys and glinting sabres swing off a sash belt. The descriptions of boats, their machinery, and the battles which come to take place on them are exceptional. It is the lushness of the writing and the stream of clever ideas, rather than the subtleties of the plot, that make this such an inspiring novel. Indeed, his flawless ability to draw the reader into a fantasy environment with precise and often quite breathtaking prose is arguably his greatest strength. But part of the appeal of Duncan’s writing is his gift of building a fictional world so utterly believable. At first it seems a highly-improbable habitat. So begins a perilous journey that leads to a clash with a bunch of female pirates, who take Elizabeth to their home world, Freedom Island, where the main hub of the story unravels.įreedom Island is unlike anything Elizabeth – or indeed this reader – has ever encountered before. But when an airship bound for America is brought down over the Sargasso Sea and a whaling vessel is also attacked, the Patent Office is forced to respond.Įnter Elizabeth Barnabus, the principal character from the first three books, who is dispatched, at her own request, to investigate. In this, the first book of a second trilogy, the story develops beyond the boundaries of the Empire, where the Patent Office have no jurisdiction. One of the most entertaining books I had the pleasure to read in the last few years was The Bullet-Catcher’s Daughter, the first in Rod Duncan’s innovative trilogy about the Gas-Lit Empire, a ‘modern day’ world manacled by the International Patent Office, an organisation who have stalled the progress of technology and in so doing brought about a Peace Accord between most of the nations around the globe.

The Bullet-Catcher's Daughter by Rod Duncan