A confidently penned, exciting, and original work of steampunk sci-fi.
Breaking The Shell That Encloses Your Understanding by John Raleigh Boyd is a richly layered and genre-defying novel that blends historical science fiction with cosmic horror. We find ourselves in London in 1899 for the inciting incident of this novel, when a horrifying vision appears through an experimental new neural link. A group of pioneering scientists and adventurers, from neurobiologist Henri Radetsky and physicist Aleksei Sokolnikov to investigator Maxwell Jaxon and inventor Oliver Harrison, uncover a terrifying interdimensional threat after having visions of alien spiders preparing Earth’s conquest come to light. The team is soon swept into a globe-spanning conflict that brings them to ancient sites, lost cities, and celestial battlegrounds aplenty, with new discoveries and dangers lurking at every turn to test their skills and teamwork to the limit. Joined by historic and fictional figures including Captain Nemo and revolutionary Julio Cervera Baviera, they race to decode ancient knowledge, battle forces from a parallel dominion, and turn Earth’s own monuments against the invaders. Through psychoactive-fueled insight and technological daring, the team strives to succeed in a last-ditch effort to reclaim reality, but it may well come at a terrible cost.
Author John Raleigh Boyd has a fantastic vision for this story and the world in which it is set, and his steampunk-era alien invasion is both innovative and chilling to follow thanks to the precise levels of detail and immersion he’s worked into every line of text. The dialogue is similarly richly textured, suited to each character’s intellect and era, and the synthesis of real historical figures with speculative science is wildly imaginative, but always convincingly grounded because he manages to inject so much realism into them. With Nemo, for example, he no longer feels like a legendary figure whose achievements overshadow his personality, but a man that you can forge a connection with and see growing from the challenges of the plot, just like any other character. The pacing balances all the cerebral speculation of the alien threat with some truly thrilling action scenes that are cinematically described and never too visceral for the overall tone of the book. This allows everything to remain accessible to all sorts of readers, and Boyd’s depiction of trans-dimensional horror evokes Lovecraftian dread without ever entering the world of mimicry. Overall, Breaking The Shell That Encloses Your Understanding is a fantastic read for those seeking complex and enjoyable stories that weave scientific theory and philosophical musings into the narrative seamlessly, but also have plenty of action and high global stakes to keep you gripped from cover to cover. A confidently penned, exciting, and original work of steampunk sci-fi that I would highly recommend.
