Cook, a native of the Pacific Northwest, writes from a time period when that region lay vast and wild, untamed and mostly uninhabited. If I thought First Light was an adventure from the turn of the nineteenth century... Gods of the Sun was a veritable time machine!
So much of the steampunk genre focuses heavily on the mechanisms of the era, leaving the setting within the confines of Industrialized Victorian London. Cook, like Sir James Coltrane and his intrepid crew, dares to circumnavigate the world and show us the hitherto "untouched" regions beyond the "known" world of the time, in all their native glory. "First Light" took us westward and south across the Americas, and now the mission brings us East across the Atlantic to Australia and Southern Asia.
In his mission to expand the world of early-nineteenth-century Earth, Cook does not neglect his characters. We have been introduced and become acquainted already; now connections are drawn or withheld as we become friends with some characters and count others as enemies.
In addition to the natural dangers involved with flying a dirigible around the world, Cook brings human emotions through his narrative: there is betrayal and uncertainty, sorrow and vindication, camaraderie and cold shoulders. Just as the relations between the characters are changing, the mission changes in the wake of unforeseen tragedy. An astonishing revelation completely shifts Gregory's initial perspective on the entire journey and the people involved.
All of this is lovingly and faithfully recorded in true journalistic retrospect. Honestly, in reading some of the more harrowing accounts I felt like I was in that time period, reading of current events, and I had to remind myself more than once, "Well, he's writing about all this stuff that has already happened, so I know they survived!"
Granted, this installment felt quite a bit longer than the last one, but maybe that is because things are not so fresh and new and exciting, and, like Cordelia, we are sensing the impending end to this marvelous journey and now only wish for a safe return for the ones we have come to love!
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