Second paragraph of third chapter:

All those years hearing talk of hellfire and brimstone on a Sunday morning, the vicar preaching that a life of sin and misdemeanour would lead to condemnation and torment in the next life—at no point had the young Clarence imagined the waking Hell he might first be forced to endure as a working adult. None of it had prepared him for this.

I wasn’t expecting to like this much, and I didn’t. Steampunk and zombies, neither of which are my favourite things, along with Mann’s usual leaden prose and historical inaccuracies. Did not finish. You can get The Revenant Express here.

This was my top unread book acquired in 2020, and the sf book that had lain longest unread on my bookshelves. Next on those piles are Year’s Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction and Fantasy: Volume I, ed. Marie Hodgkinson, and Tides of the Titans, by Thoraiya Dyer.