Cut to five years previous, in a prequel to the whole series. The villain sets off after George and Harold, who are in juvie (“not much different from our old school…except that they have library books here.”). There, he witnesses fellow inmate Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) escape in a giant Robo-Suit (later reduced to time-traveling trousers). To start, in an alternate ending to the previous episode, Principal Krupp ends up in prison (“…a lot like being a student at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School, except that the prison had better funding”). Not that there aren’t pranks and envelope-pushing quips aplenty. Sure signs that the creative wells are running dry at last, the Captain’s ninth, overstuffed outing both recycles a villain (see Book 4) and offers trendy anti-bullying wish fulfillment.

Treads familiar ground but with hair-raising and cinematic charm. “Cogs and chronometers,” cry the mechs, and “crankshafts and carburetors”! The human (and humanlike) cast members all present white. The plot gleefully deploys genre tropes while puzzles lead to a CGI–ready series of climactic escapes. What dark family secrets was Lily’s dad hiding? Surely his old friend, with the totally trustworthy name of Professor Silverfish, will know more about the important clockwork research. But two terrifying baddies with mirrors for eyes are after them both, and it will take all the airship adventure and steam power they can muster to succeed. Robert’s the son of the local clockmaker, eager to help Lily with her quest. But as any astute reader trained on the likes of Roald Dahl will know, an orphan can’t trust her old housekeeper, especially when she covers her face with a black veil, speaks with an unplaceable “foreign” accent, and has been maltreating the family mechs. When her father’s airship crashes in a mysterious accident, Lily’s fetched from school by her family housekeeper.

Lily’s the only nice girl at a nasty finishing school where all the other students and teachers are dreadful and mistreat their mechs. Robert and Lily, both 13, wouldn’t normally have encountered each other in 1896 England. A new steampunk trilogy introduces dastardly villains, friendly mechanicals, and thrilling airship action.

Cogheart author