For one month only (until 5-22-12) you can pick up a copy of The Voyage of the Minotaur at Smashwords for $0. You must use coupon code ZT66C, and this only fuctions at the Smashwords website, not any other book retailer.
You can also pick up Brechalon, which is the novella length prequel to The Voyage of the Minotaur. This is yours free from Smashwords without a coupon code.
Find it here:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/11536
Description
In a world of steam power and rifles, where magic has not yet been forgotten, an expedition sets out to establish a colony in a lost world. The Voyage of the Minotaur is a story of adventure and magic, religion and prejudice, steam engines and dinosaurs, angels and lizardmen, machine guns and wizards, sorceresses, bustles and corsets, steam-powered computers, hot air balloons, and dragons.
Review by S. Horrigan (Shaun) on Amazon UK Boards
Set in the country of Greater Brechalon, populated by ladies wearing corsets and dresses with bustles, carrying parasols to keep the sun off their alabaster skin and gentlemen with very stiff upper lips driving steam powered carriages, this is a very steampunk version of an alternate Victorian England.
Steampunk however is only one of the multiple genres that are thrown into the mix. There are wizards and sorceresses, airships and analytical engines, dragons and dinosaurs, lizard men and a good old fashioned series of Jack the Ripper style murders to solve too.
Quite honestly this book should never work. There are too many things thrown into the melting pot, but somehow not only does it work, but it works wonderfully well!
The author clearly loves language and his use of idiomatic Victorian style English is really very good, but there are still a few occasions when you are left in no doubt that the book was written by an American author. I did feel though that the end of the story was rather abrupt and in my opinion and the final few paragraphs should probably have been an epilogue, but these are minor things really.
It is quite a long book being over 8000 Kindle locations and provides several hours of hugely entertaining reading. Presentation on the Kindle is excellent with good formatting and no obvious errors that I could see.
Overall - 5 stars! I will be reading the rest of this series very soon. I will say though that I have a huge weakness for both steampunk style books and for anything set in an alternate Victorian style setting, so you might want to download the sample and try a few pages for yourself before you decide to buy it. Personally, despite my minor petty criticisms, I absolutely loved this book!