Capt Robert Brown (1970–)

I bought this when I ordered a CD from the band (Abney Park), and it's hard to say if a non-fan would really enjoy it. It's a fantasical autobiography, telling the stories behind a lot of their songs, but the premise is really engaging: a band encounters a time travelling Victorian airship, and joins up with them to do some good deeds (stopping tragedies through time) and some piracy (gotta fuel the Ophelia somehow). I think I just wanted more all around, a lot of the chapters (named for song titles) felt too short, I wanted more details. The tensions between the Captain and the bellydancer were a bit uncomfortable to read, it felt like he was fictionalising a real life rocky relationship. There's also a fair bit of Captain-centric bias - we hardly hear about his wife, though we get a good chapter on his daughters. The two parts are well separated, the prologue to set the stage, then the big "dealing with the consequences of time travel" part was interesting, though I think I got lost amid the multiple instances of one character.… (més)