While I’m on the subject of things that might remind you of some of my books, I’ve been watching Carnival Row on Amazon, and it’s kind of like a mix of my Fairy Tale series and my Rebels series. It’s a steampunk world with the fae in it.

I’m not entirely sure I like it. It’s interesting and I want to see what happens, but I’m not really enjoying watching it. In fact, I have to be doing something else like knitting or working puzzles while I’m watching because it’s a bit unpleasant to just watch. I’d compare it to A Game of Thrones in tone. It’s got that same grim grayness to the look of it, and almost all the characters are pretty awful people. The “good guys” are just less awful than everyone else. In fact, the “hero” has what I guess is meant to be a “save the cat” moment early in the pilot in which he does something reasonably good, and it stands out as unusual in this world although it’s really just basic decency. He’s not totally terrible, yay. There is a character who gets a surprisingly satisfying growth arc and there’s another character I’m hoping will get his act together, though where I am now in the story he’s pretty hate-worthy. I think part of the problem is that the writers focused so much on creating horrible, complex antagonists that they forgot to make the main characters interesting. There’s only so much Orlando Bloom can do with a character who mostly just mopes a lot, and he’s grubby enough that he’s not even that pretty in this.

But the world is pretty fascinating. From what I can tell (I’m still not entirely clear on the backstory, even though I’ve started season 2), there was some kind of war in the world of the fae, and refugees have come to the human world, where they’re treated the way refugees generally are, especially if they’re seen as different (not so well). It’s a kind of Dickensian Victorian world, very steampunky, though the war stuff has a World War I look. There are airships.

The first season is essentially a police procedural set against a lot of political maneuvering. There’s a serial killer, and there doesn’t seem to be a link between the victims—until our hero the police detective finds a surprising link. Meanwhile, there are social issues involving the fae in human society, a politician’s wife scheming for power, and a snobbish sister and brother dealing with a wealthy fae who’s moved into their neighborhood, much to their dismay. In the middle of this is the newly arrived fae woman who thinks her former lover, the police detective, has been dead for years.

I should warn that it’s at about the sex/violence language of Game of Thrones. Very graphic violence, a lot of nudity (especially female), some fairly graphic sex scenes, R-rated language. Not family-friendly entertainment. But if you like stories about the fae and the steampunk aesthetic, give it a shot.

One other link to my books is that one of the writing staff members was going to be the head writer for one of the attempts to make an Enchanted, Inc. TV series. I wish that project had worked out because she really grasped the concept. We had a conference call in which she gave me the pitch they were going to give to networks and production companies, and she nailed it, really capturing the spirit of the books. It’s nice to see that she landed somewhere else when that didn’t work out.

Speaking of stories about the fae, I’m participating in a group promo of books about the fae. You can find a whole collection to browse here. This is my first time to try one of these group promo thingies, and it would really help me if you click on the link because then I get credit for sharing it and have a better chance of getting into future promos where we all share each other’s books. Check it out and see if there’s something that looks interesting.