Karen Memory Is the Steampunk Adventure Story You’ve Been Waiting For

Karen Memery is a prostitute (euphemism: seamstress—I thought that was a Terry Pratchett invention, but apparently it was totally a thing for sex workers to register their profession as “seamstress” back in the day) who lives in a 19th-century steampunk Seattle. She works in a brothel run by Madame Damnable—an amazing name, inspired by Seattle’s own Mother Damnable—who takes care of her diverse assortment of girls. The brothel is top of the ladder in terms of sex work; there are also “crib girls,” who are trafficked and kept in slavery and appalling conditions, and the girls who walk the streets.
Things go to hell in the first few pages, and keep going downhill from there. There’s the fact that the man who runs the crib girls has obtained a mind controlling device, is running for mayor unopposed, and has it in for the girls at Madame Damnable’s. There’s the man killing prostitutes and dumping them outside the brothels as a message. There’s the in-general crapitude of being a woman in the 19th century, and a prostitute at that. There’s an airship, and some sort of enormous mechanical octopus, and a surprisingly badass Singer sewing machine. And on top of everything, Karen’s fallen in love with an ex-prostitute who needs her help.
It’s a wonderful tale that makes me want to use a bunch of R-words, like “rip-roaring” and “rollicking,” maybe moseying over to a spittoon in-between. The plot is so tightly paced you can count the down-moments on one hand, and the story is inventive and imaginative, but surprisingly grounded—the airships and mind-control devices might be new, but violence against women isn’t, and neither is a whole slew of other social injustices Karen takes on. She and her friends face very recognizable problems and, in the end, triumph over many of them. It’s cathartic.
Karen is brought to life through her narration, which is both colorful and insightful. Bear’s prose distinguishes itself throughout: when a character stomps through a door, she “goes striding out into that burning cold in her negligee and marabou slippers like she owned the night and the rest of us was just paying rent on it;” and when some bad guys burst into the brothel they come “boiling through the door like a confusion of scalded weasels.” I regret to say that it has never once, in my whole life, occurred to me to compare something to a scalded weasel.
Karen Memory is a splendid adventure story, consistently enjoyable, with a nice kick of righteousness at the end. In short, it’s a delight.