What if rock ‘n roll had been invented back in the Age of Steam?
What if a steampunk rock ‘n roll band became the greatest sensation ever?
The outcast gangs of Brummingham are making a new kind of music. But Astor Vance has been trained in the art of refined classical piano playing.
Then her life plummets from riches to rags, and the only way she can survive in the slums is to adapt to the new driving beat of gang music.
Her companion in crime and music is the charismatic Verrol, who’d previously been acting as her servant. Now he could be so much more – if only he’d come clean about his mysterious past!
A new novel set in a different part of the Worldshaker world! Same excitement and adventure, same steampunk setting, same imagination – with more romance!
Here’s the Australian video clip from Allen & Unwin:
It’s 1846, and the whole country is drowning in a sea of smog. This is a time locomotives and factories, steam-powered airships and strange velocipedes. The wealthy factory-owners are itching to seize power, and vicious bands of ex-soldiers can’t wait to start another world war.
Young women in 1846 are supposed to be ladylike, and 17-year-old Astor expects a life of quiet luxury after she marries her handsome magnate, Lorrain Swale. Instead, she finds herself abandoned and treated with contempt by the Swale family.
Help arrives in the form of the enigmatic Verrol. Together they escape and plunge into the murky slums of Brummingham, where they fall in with Granny Rouse’s Gang. Joining the gang’s band, the Rowdies, they soon find their new kind of music taking the world by storm.
Suddenly it’s all coming true, and fame is at their fingertips. However, the Swale family hasn’t finished with them yet. Arriving in London Town for their greatest-ever performance, they get tangled up in a diabolical plot to overthrow the government.
Song of the Slums is published by Allen & Unwin.