The Victorian period starts in 1837 when Queen Victoria came to the throne. The Anubis Gates is not set in Victorian times. I have seen some mentioning that what deems it Steampunk is the fact that 1) it is set in Victorian times as most Steampunk and 2) there is time travel. For starters, there is not a shred of science (or Steam) in the book nor there is any Punk – although there is a look at poverty and there is plot to remove the King, these are not subversive enough. After reading it, I am completely baffled as this book is not by any stretch of imagination, a Steampunk novel. Let’s get this thing out of the way first: what prompted me to read The Anubis Gates is its presence in many lists of Steampunk essentials. Oh, look, there is an elephant in the room. I had to read when we decided on a second Steampunk week.

Why did I read this book: It appears in pretty much ALL Steampunk Essentials list. Coleridge himself and poet Lord Byron make appearances in the novel, which also features a poor tinkerer who creates genetic monsters and a werewolf that inhabits others’ bodies when his latest becomes too hairy. He defies bullets, black magic, murderous beggars, freezing waters, imprisonment in mutant-infested dungeons, poisoning, and even a plunge back to 1684. When he is kidnapped by gypsies and consequently misses his return trip to 1983, the mild-mannered Doyle is forced to become a street-smart con man, escape artist, and swordsman in order to survive in the dark and treacherous London underworld. This is a London filled with deformed clowns, organised beggar societies, insane homunculi and magic. Publication date: January 1997/September 2005 (first edition 1983)īrendan Doyle is a twentieth-century English professor who travels back to 1810 London to attend a lecture given by English romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

The anubis gates