Feels a bit like filler, going from cliffhanger to cliffhanger. The actual goal is achieved anticlimactically, with the travel to it taking up all the pages, tossing crisis after crisis at the protagonists. Not bad, but not good, eithe

"The Revenant Express: A Newbury & Hobbes Investigation" eBook was published in 2019 and was written by George Mann. Mr. Mann has published more than a dozen novels. This is the fifth in his "Newbury & Hobbes Investigations" series. 

I categorize this novel as ‘R’ because it contains scenes of Violence. The story is set in a Victorian Europe, though not our own. 

Sir Maurice Newbury is headed to Russia with Veronica's sister Amelia to pick up a mechanical heart. The heart has been made by Faberge. Meanwhile Veronica lies ill in London. Their other team member, Sir Charles Bainbridge, is also in London trying to determine who is infection prominent men with the Revenant plague. 

I enjoyed the 5 hours I spent reading this 234-page steampunk mystery. This is not the ifirst novel in the series and this novel expected the reader to be familiar with the ongoing plot and characters. I recommend reading them in order. I do like the selected cover art. I give this novel a 3.8 (rounded up to a 4) out of 5.

Further book reviews I have written can be accessed at https://johnpurvis.wordpress.com/blog/. 

My book reviews are also published on Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/31181778-john-purvis).

The Revenant Express is the 5th book in the Newbury and Hobbes mystery series by George Mann. This series reminds me a lot of The Avengers (the Steed & Peel Avengers, that is), set in an alternate Victorian steampunk world. There are steam trains (with a central train subplot set on an intercontinental steam train reminiscent of the Orient express), magic, secret societies, a clockwork heart ( loved the author's nod to Fabergè), spies, counterintelligence, skullduggery, creepy science, zombies (zombies!), trains, and more.

Released 12th Feb 2019 by Tor books, it's 256 pages and available in hardcover, audio-, and ebook formats.

This is a surprisingly intricate book with multiple intertwining subplots and a large number of returning characters; as such, it doesn't work well at all as a standalone. I was unfamiliar with the series before I started reading, and I was forced to go back to read the first book to have a clue what was going on.

Whilst I am a fan of steampunk fantasy, I'm not much of a horror fan, and this series is a lot more in the horror vein than I prefer, honestly. That being said, however, this is a well crafted book with taut plotting and pacing, good and believable dialogue, and well written characters who follow internal motivations. I enjoyed it enough that I believe I will pick up the next book in the series at least.

Four stars, well written and extremely creepy.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes

The Revenant Express by George Mann is the latest Victorian paranormal melodrama. Sir Maurice Newbury and Amelia Hobbes are enroute on the sleeper train to St. Petersburg to get a mechanical heart for Amelia's sister Venonica from Faberge. Veronica was attacked by revenants spouting vegetation and lies dying with a wounded heart. Revenants are attacking passengers on the train. Who is responsible and can Newbury and Hobbes stop them? Enjoy.

I was given a ARC of this book by netgalley in exchange for a honest review.

A fight against time and death across a zombie infested railway and Russia. What more can we ask for from Hobbes? Just wish it were a little longer.

Suspense, adventure and lots of zombie related action, wrapped up by characters who know how to dress and behave well!!!!!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the free review copy. In this installment Newbury is off on a train trip to Russia in order to get a mechanical heart for Hobbes. Meanwhile she is trying to help Bainbridge with some disturbing dead bodies. The revenant express itself is a bit like the Orient express but with murdering plague victims. Not a problem for Newbury but some of the other travellers are tricky.

I really like Newbury and Hobbes they're a great duo. I think that's partly why I wasn't completely in love with this book in the series. For nearly all of it the detecting duo are apart, for me Veronica's sister Amelia is a poor substitute. It's been a very long wait for this installment and it is a relatively short tale with a short story at the end possibly teasing a future plot.

Finally the time has come I get to write a review for this book. The wait has been long, so so long – especially considering the situation in which we left Miss Hobbes at the end of the fourth book. Sadly it didn’t quite deliver.

Don’t get me wrong, this is still a great read. Newbury is a wonderful protagonist to read from, and this time he is joined by Amelia. She really gets to shine in this novel. She clearly is the sister of Veronica, they share some feisty characteristics. Yet she is very much her own character and I thought she was great. And there is no need to worry, Veronica gets to go on her own adventure together with Bainbridge back in London (set several months before the events of The Executioner’s Heart).

So characterwise this book is as great as all the previous ones. It is the plot and pacing that kind of bugged me. Like I said, we follow the story of Newbury as well as that of Veronica. The result of this is that neither of these get enough page time to tell the stories in a satisfactory manner. Veronica looks into the disappearance of two nurses, connected to a corpse that has been found with plants growing out of the body. Though interesting, there is hardly any mystery to this case. There are a few very simple steps leading Veronica from A to B and the resolving of the case, and the puzzle is lacking. At the same time we read about Newbury and Amelia on their way to St. Petersburg in a train, where they have to deal with a Revenant infestation as well as a murderous cultist. And then part of Veronica’s case also shows up. A lot is going on, and the clever connections between the different elements we have seen in the previous books is lacking in this one. The idea is there, it is just missing that final step bringing it all together.

I would have liked to have seen more of St. Petersburg. We have gotten used to a very believable and extensive London setting so far in the series, and I was looking forward to see what George Mann would do with this other great city. Sadly the characters get to spent very little time here and then rush themselves back to London again (understandably, they have to save Veronica). I cannot help but think though that the book would have been stronger if less of the action was focused on the train and more in the Russian city.

Now I sound really whiny. I don’t mean to be. This was a very fun read I raced through in a single sitting and enjoyed immensely. It just didn’t quite live up to the massive expectations I had set up in my head after having waited for this book for years. It is still a great addition to the series and I already cannot wait for the sixth book again…

This is an action-packed read, given that it is only just over 250 pages long. Mann certainly manages to keep the tempo fast and furious as both Veronica Hobbes and Maurice Newbury are both attempting to tackle a terrible threat. Although I enjoyed the excellent action scenes, particularly on the train – I am a tad concerned about a major anomaly. We are told in the blurb that Veronica is close to death – so I actually reread the opening chapter in which she features, and at no time do we get a sense in her viewpoint that she’s anything other than a tad cold and miserable while standing in the pouring rain. While close to death, she happily goes off to get involved in a demanding case with Sir Charles Bainbridge and doesn’t mention feeling slightly unwell at any stage.

While in the ordinary run of things, this issues would be a dealbreaker, they aren’t this time around, simply because I like the world and the characters so much. It doesn’t hurt that this particular adventure is largely set on a train travelling across Europe, so a lot of the action doesn’t impact the wider story arc. The gruesome nature of the infection causing all sorts of havoc presents a real danger to our trusty protagonists – and has Mann has already demonstrated that he isn’t shy of killing off some main characters, I found myself paying real attention to the very dramatic fights.

That said, something clearly occurred that threw a major spanner in the works regarding Mann’s writing. I hope he is able to get back on track to write the next exciting instalment, but if he can’t or doesn’t – that’s okay, too. I do wince sometimes at the angry impatience of some readers while waiting for the next book. Everyone experiences major upsets in their lives – including authors in the middle of writing a popular series. In the meantime this series is recommended for fans of steampunk adventure with a gothic feel.

While I obtained an arc of The Revenant Express from the publisher via Netgalley, the opinions I have expressed are unbiased and my own.
8/10

"The grand adventure continues in George Mann's Newbury and Hobbes steampunk mystery series, as a Victorian special agent races across a continent to save his beloved's life on board The Revenant Express.

Sir Maurice Newbury is bereft as his trusty assistant Veronica Hobbes lies dying with a wounded heart. Newbury and Veronica's sister Amelia must take a sleeper train across Europe to St. Petersberg to claim a clockwork heart that Newbury has commissioned from Faberge to save Veronica from a life trapped in limbo.

No sooner do they take off then sinister goings-on start to plague the train, and it is discovered that an old villain, thought dead, is also on board and seeking revenge. Can Newbury and Amelia defeat him and get the clockwork organ back to the Fixer in time to save Veronica? And can they do so without Newbury going so far into the dark side of occult magic that he can never return?

Meanwhile, Sir Charles Bainbridge is the only one of their team left in London to struggle with a case involving a series of horrific crimes. Someone is kidnapping prominent men and infecting them with the Revenant plague, leaving them chained in various locations around the city. But why?

It's a rousing chase to save both London and Veronica. Will these brave detectives be up to the task?"

FINALLY! With the way George jumps around in his storytelling we knew Veronica would survive... but it's been AGONY to find out how. Thankfully The Revenant Express has arrived at the station.

“Progress for the sake of progress must be discouraged. Let us preserve what must be preserved, perfect what can be perfected and prune practices that ought to be prohibited.”

While I am loathe to quote one of modern literature’s most heinous villains, George Mann’s latest instalment of the Newbury and Hobbes saga, The Revenant Express, is close to proving Um****ge correct. After all, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Cause change isn’t always a good thing. Having ploughed through the first four (excellent) instalments of the series in the three weeks preceding my reading of The Revenant Express, I had come to expect certain things from each Newbury and Hobbes book. However, with the cliffhanger that The Executioner’s Heart left us with, it was easy to sense the winds of change blowing towards the series.

The entirety of the series so far has taken place in a steampunk-styled Victorian London, a character in its own right with well realised locales full of mystery. Despite this, I think Mann’s decision to take the series from London to Paris to St. Petersburg via his own warped version of the Orient Express was the right one. Unlike previous instalments, where Newbury and Hobbes bandied around the city at will from location to location with a sense of freedom, the train had a claustrophobic feel that had characters trapped and unable to avoid whatever destiny lay before them. Furthermore, the nature of Newbury’s main problem in this story (clue in the title) only serves to exacerbate the sense of foreboding brought on from being trapped on a high-speed moving train.

The Revenant Express also brings about big changes in character dynamics. While previous cases saw Newbury driven by his curiosity, intrigue, and duty, his motivations here are far more intense and personal, which comes through in how he is written. The cheerful and spirited side of Newbury was largely absent, instead replaced by a more morose intensity and seriousness, which I felt was detrimental to the character. We also have Newbury joined by Veronica Hobbes’ sister Amelia for this continental train journey from hell. A minor character in the series so far, I enjoyed the extra page time given to the more naïve and unsuspecting of the Hobbes sisters. Indeed these character traits juxtaposed the paranoia and jaded Newbury quite well. However, I felt that the relationship between the two was much too similar to that of Newbury and Veronica in the previous books. There were moments during their interactions where I felt that you could substitute Amelia for Veronica and it wouldn’t really change anything…

The other major change between The Revenant Express and its predecessors is with the story itself. The level of mystery and ‘whodunnit’ within the plot felt greatly reduced from the previous instalments, instead replaced by more action scenes, and the ‘surprise’ element was entirely predictable. However, I thoroughly enjoyed the secondary element of the story involving Bainbridge and Veronica back in London. Indeed, this brings me back to my initial point about change not always being for the better. What worked for me with regards to the story were the mystery elements that involved, in this case, Bainbridge and Veronica Hobbes following the trail of the fungal infection around the streets of London. That is, the elements of the story that reminded me of why I enjoyed the Newbury and Hobbes series in the first place.

Now, all of this isn’t to say that I didn’t enjoy the book. I did. It just felt like filler that could have been a short novella between the series’ main instalments. Indeed, it effectively acted as a conclusion to the cliff hanger that we were left with and a bridge to whatever the next instalment may be. I’ve no doubt that a lot of people will love this one as much as those that came before it, but for me the changes just didn’t quite work. Hopefully, with Newbury back in London and Hobbes back on her feet, episode 6 will see the return of the series to previously excellent self.

The Revenant Express brims with adventure and danger, creating an exciting race to get to the bottom of multiple mysteries. There’s never a loss for action as the reader is sent down two pathways that converge at the end. With so much to do, I was entranced by the story, flying between narratives and getting to know these well-established characters who are new to me. I haven’t read the previous four books, but that wasn’t an issue with this fifth book in the Newberry & Hobbes series. As far as genre, we have Victorian mystery-solving combined with steampunk influences, occult magic, zombies, and mysterious creatures. Needless to say, it’s a fascinating combination of genres and sub-genres.

The steampunk elements in The Revenant Express were pretty light. There were definite mentions, and an overarching goal involving a fascinating mechanical object but overall, it was more mystery than steampunk. The train itself is a marvel to imagine with its two-story train cars and epic steam engine. There are horrors hiding at the front, to be sure, but overall it’s extremely glamorous and quite Victorian. Coupled with an on-the-streets mystery narrative in early 1900’s London, the settings created an imaginative journey.

Overall, The Revenant Express is an impressive feat, combining a handful of genres to create a well-connected narrative that is sure to be a much-sought-after addition to this series. It was a great way to spend a Sunday morning, and I look forward to the future of the series.

When I looked at the cover and blurb on NetGalley for The Revenant Express, I expected a classic mystery in a Steampunk setting. My expectations were very wrong and that colored my impressions of the book. Note that I had not looked up anything on the series before getting it. Perhaps I should have, but I dislike risking having my impressions potentially colored by anything beyond what the book itself offers and how the author or publisher blurb it. But having looked it up might have corrected my expectations (I've still not done so. I want my review not influenced by the impressions of others).

I was aware that I was going into a series further in without having read the earlier ones. In this case, I do recommend reading others first, probably in order. It was not a book that excelled at subtly filling in missing details, although I appreciated that it also didn't have info dumps. But this lack of background didn't make me want to run away. It just added some frustrations and confusion. Some details I figured out further in and some I never felt properly informed on.

So if the book wasn't a typical mystery, what was it? It felt more like a thriller with the types of suspense and some of the POVs used. It was less about solving things or answering questions and more about a lot of stuff happening quickly with danger involved. The big question was who would survive and who would die.

I'm not a huge thriller fan. That's my taste playing into how I rate and enjoy a book. On that front, there was nothing wrong with it but the book and I weren't a good fit. I do like Steampunk normally, although this one has elements I don't consider normal to the genre. Some of those contributed to how it fit me a bit less as a reader.

However, while I was reading some of these scenes that most definitely pushed beyond my limits of what I enjoy reading, the writing was so compelling that I couldn't put it down. I read the entire thing in one sitting (not that that's unusual with me). But even when my brain was screaming, "eeek! This is too much for me," I couldn't take a break from it or skim it. The writing was just too powerful.

The timeline confused me a good bit initially. I kept flipping back and forth, studying the headers on date (which only appeared on a few early chapters in the ARC I read but that might be changed in the final version), and trying to make sense of things. From a few deductions I made in the closing scene, I suspect this may be clearer to those who have read the earlier books but I can't be certain.

Finally, I hate hook endings. This book does not end on a cliffhanger--it resolves the primary and secondary interlocking external arcs of the book. But then it continues with a teaser hooking you into the next book. While I realize other readers may enjoy or not mind that, I do and it does impact my rating negatively.

Overall, I end up somewhere around 3.5 stars for this book. Better than average for the great writing and creativity but held back by the hook ending and the fact that I turned out not to be the right reader for this book. I am sure the book will be a far more satisfying read to someone who loves what the book is. I don't want to risk spoilers with any details. But I definitely recommend that you consider reading earlier books in the series before this one.

The next edition in the Newbury & Hobbs books finds Sir Maurice and Veronica's sister on a train speeding to St. Petersburg for a new heart for Veronica. Man eating Revenants, and the evil Cabal make for a hair raising and violent trip. Can't wait for the next book.