To a Victorian London setting add a dash of airships, a pinch of spycams and a generous helping of gruesome murder for a collection of story elements bound to please. Pastworld is a theme park, a fully immersive reconstruction of Victorian England in 2050 London. A Ripper-like murderer, the Fantom, has emerged, and somehow he is connected to the theme park’s leaders. The mystery draws together a disparate cast of characters into a cacophonous narrative: a well-meaning but callow youth from outside the park, an intrepid police inspector, an Artful Dodger type with a heart of gold and a 17-year-old girl with no memory of her youth. Thoroughly inexpert prose—painfully contrived diary entries that punctuate the narrative stand out as examples of this—doesn’t change the fact that romance and grisly murder among gas lamps will be sure to win fans. The stereotyped stock characters are likable and the predictable plotlines are enjoyable, so what's wrong with that? (Science fiction. 13-15)
