MOTHSTORM

It’s Up the Empire and Huzzah! as Art and Myrtle Mumby and their superhuman Solar System–creating Shaper mother return for a third Victorian space-operatic adventure. The Mumbys’ Christmas celebration with friends Jack Havock, (former) space pirate, and his crew is rudely interrupted, first by a Christmas Pudding Worm and then by a visit from the odious Doctor Blears, the Government’s Chief of Natural Philosophy. An intercepted distress signal from Georgium Sidus (only the crudest call it Uranus) leads the intrepid adventurers to the far reaches of known space, where they encounter another, evil, Shaper and her army of giant-moth–riding lizardlike Snilth, who are bent on taking over the British Empire! Reeve’s imagination seems to know no bounds, as he conjures up ever more ridiculous and hilarious predicaments and solutions for his heroes—who knew that the prissy Myrtle and her obsession with propriety could hold the key to victory? With a cameo from Queen Victoria herself, as well as Sir Richard Burton, his Martian wife, Ulla, and a fretful Scottish ship’s engineer, this tale will satisfy fans in inimitably jolly fashion. (Science fiction. 10-14)