Love and Romanpunk by Tansy Rayner Roberts


Love and Romanpunk by Tansy Rayner Roberts was an unexpected addition to my Australian Women Writers 2012 Reading & Reviewing Challenge. I was actually doing a shout-out for #steampunkchat on Twitter and asking for other-punk recommendations and @KaelaJael said “Romanpunk! by @TansyRR”.

So when I was reading Love and Romanpunk I was split between looking for the ‘punk and trying to analyse (for this review) what it was that made the book so good.

For a start, there’s no faking expertise. Tansy knows the Roman era she writes about, its characters and legends. That shines through from the first story.

Have I mentioned that Love and Romanpunk is a collection of short stories? and what a collection! There is a looping, impressive structure to the stories that builds with sly, humorous relentlessness to the steampunk-in-modern-times final adventure.

The paranormal aspect of the collection is well-integrated and made to seem a natural enough progression from the Roman history taken and twisted in the opening story.

The writing is strong. The narrators of the different stories have distinct voices. The collection shows a practised storyteller having fun spinning around a theme.

 


6 responses to “Love and Romanpunk by Tansy Rayner Roberts”

    • I've been loving it! So many great reviews of interesting books I'd never heard of. Thanks for dropping by and commenting 🙂

        • It amazed me how quickly a sense of community grew around #AWW2012. Very nice … and perhaps a sign of how neglected that field of reading/reviewing was?

  1. Just read some of your poetry and I like it. I too write poetry a lately have slowly been making my way into the notion of Steampunk poetry. My protagonists are often afflicted and their tasks are often rooted in some kind of angst. I am working on a new piece that tells the story of a young teen who has a symbiotic relationship with a supernatural superhero who is Dada like [The Mute]. When he is released The Mute solves crimes. This work risk being epic and quite with an archenemy [Lord Daemon Bligh] a greedy banker who plots to steal money from any and everyone in order to control the world. His henchmen are Cho Cho Minhwa and General Pierre Dumoulin who are hackers and soldiers of fortune. This work is illustrated too. I want to know are there any entry level publishers for novice steampunk poets or is self-publishing the only route?

    Peace

    Gil

    • I wish I knew the answer to your publishing question because your work sounds fascinating and I hope you find a way to share it with us. But my short answer, is "I don't know". Maybe someone at the Steampunk Writers and Artists Guild may know more…

      http://steampunkwriters.ning.com/

      The very best of luck, Gil.

Leave a Reply to JennyCancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.