Reviewed by Colette
TITLE: Wicklow’s Odyssey
AUTHOR: R. Cooper
PUBLISHER: Dream Spinner Press
LENGTH: 368 pages
BLURB:
Union soldier Wicklow Doyle is infiltrating enemy lines to set up new radio communications technology in Confederate-held Charleston when his location is betrayed. After sacrificing himself to get his team to safety, he’s on the lam, friendless in a hostile town. Determining who betrayed him without discovery by Confederate soldiers is dangerous, but Wicklow grew up in the slums of New York and knows how to handle himself. He isn’t expecting anyone on his team to return to help him, much less Alexander Rhoades.
An effete dandy of great intelligence and conviction, Alexander Rhoades speaks through stories instead of giving orders, and he has earned the confidence of the rich and powerful. While Wicklow has come not to trust men with those traits, Rhoades has never once let him down. He looks at Wicklow in ways that make him burn beneath his skin and tells him stories of love and bravery Wicklow yearns to understand. Wicklow has absolute faith Rhoades’s brilliant mind will uncover the traitor in their midst and find them a way out of the city. But when Rhoades tells him he’s not alone, Wicklow isn’t sure he can believe him. For the first time in his life, though, he wants to.
REVIEW:
I am going to go all fan girl here and say straight out this book is brilliant! R. Cooper is on my short list of must read authors. Brilliant but not an easy read, you can’t just breeze through this one; you have to pay attention, read what is being said, and more importantly, what is NOT said. There is so much depth and texture to this novel, and to the characters that you can’t but help being caught up in the story. In that way it reminded me of the Caleb Carr’s The Alienist – I would look up from my ereader and be surprised that I was not in the alt-universe, Steampunk Charleston of Wicklow’s Odyssey.
In this world, the Union Army has radio communications and Wicklow Doyle is the man who builds and installs them for the Union agents in the field. Working with his team: Antonio, an Italian demolitions expert; Pilar, a sniper and the Colonel, a former solder, under the direction of Alexander Rhoades, spymaster and leader, they are in Charleston on just such a mission when things go FUBAR. Warned by Pilar that Reb soldiers are on their way to his position, Wicklow manages to destroy the radio and escape. Determined to discover who betrayed them, and sure that his team has left, he is surprised to find Rhoades has come for him.
This is the basic plot of the story, a classic espionage tale of death and betrayal, but it is so much more. The beauty of this novel lies in the storytelling. It is in the dance between Wicklow and Rhoades; the tension, the need, the longing between these two is palpable. They circle around each other, come together, separate, and circle again like an erotic pas de deux – they are beautiful together. It is in the way Antonio fixes Pilar’s hair and in the trust between Pilar and Wicklow; it is in the history between Louis, the manager of the brothel Wicklow’s team seeks refuge at, and Rhoades – one a slave the other grandson of his owners; between the Colonel, a military man who believes in honor and does not understand or condone this new style of war, the rest of the team and Rhoades who for all his tales of ancient heroes, is a modern man and understands there is very little that is honorable in war. It is in the stories Rhoades tells Wicklow, of Alexander and Hephaistion, Achilles and Patroclus, of Odysseus and the Trojan War.
The plot moves from finding the traitor and getting out of Charleston, to uncovering what the Rebels are planning and getting that information back to Washington. Plans are made and traps are set leading up to an explosive confrontation in the streets of Charleston. The identity of the traitor and the reasons why they betrayed the team did not come as a surprise; the evidence is all there in the story if you pay attention.
I highly recommend this book to lovers of speculative historical fiction and steampunk.
RATING: 
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