Book Recommendation

I just finished reading two books by Chris Wooding:  Retribution Falls and The Black Lung Captain.  These books are set in a steampunk-ish universe (if you don't know what steampunk is, click here).   The story is similar to the Firefly TV series, except that the crew is a little rougher around the edges (if you haven't seen Firefly, it's pretty darn good--I highly recommend it).  I found Retribution Falls at Borders while I was looking for something else--I hadn't previously heard about it.

The books follow the misadventures of the crew of the Ketty Jay, a small airship owned by Darian Frey.  Frey is a small-time low life with an addiction to gambling, booze, and women, and who wants nothing more than to be free and keep flying.  This is made difficult for him by the fact that his love of gambling, booze, and women usually keeps him from investing money in his airship, which always seems to be on the verge of breaking down.  In order to feed his addictions and keep his ship in the sky (and to occasionally pay his crew), he takes whatever jobs he can, legal or illegal.  This leads to them getting mixed up in some serious circumstances, which Frey is none too happy about, but it is entertaining to watch them deal with it.

The crew is a motley bunch, and most of them are running from something.  Luckily for them, the Ketty Jay is not a place where people ask a lot of questions; Frey is happy to have them as long as they do what he tells them to and don't make his life any more difficult.  Their individual foibles and problems make for interesting (and often entertaining) side stories to the main events of the book.

Retribution Falls is the first book in the tales of Frey and his crew, and The Black Lung Captain is the second.  A third will be published next summer, according to Wikipedia.  Both are a great, fun read, although the second is written a bit better in my opinion.  (The crew also starts to gel in the second book, so maybe that's why it seems better written).

So if you're looking for something a little different, I would definitely recommend these stories.