The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century 1910

Alan Moore's most recent installment in his epic League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series is the first of three stories under the title 'Century', all of which are to be self contained narratives, but which will together slow burn towards telling a truly apocalyptic tale. As this title opens, it is 1910 and George V is about to be crowned king. Mina Murray now leads a revised team of agents to the crown: Allan Quartermain Jr. (in fact the original Quartermain grown younger after finding the secret to eternal life), the "gentleman thief" A.J Raffles, occultist and ghost hunter Thomas Carnacki and Virginia Woolf's Orlando, who has been part of several incarnations of the League before.

The conspiracy the team investigate this time around is uncovered through Carnacki's visions: he sees reknowned occultist Haddo preparing a "moonchild", chaos on the waterfront and danger to the King. The investigation brings the team into confrontation with the daughter of former League member Captain Nemo, a young woman who initially refuses her birth right, but later embraces it. The old themes of teamwork, corruption and destruction are all there and the dizzying array of references to all aspects of culture are maintained, in true steampunk fashion.

However, this is, on the merits of purely this first part, the least satisfying League volume to date. It seems to lack the depth of Volumes One and Two, as well as the larger than life characters (Raffles and Carnacki are relatively obscure literary figures) and a truly dastardly villain (in fact, the reader isn't given the satisfaction of knowing who the real villain is). One can only assume that the unanswered questions will be answered to an extent by July's release of 'Century: 1969'. The best part of this narrative relates to Nemo's daughter Janni, who not only indulges in a fine bit of naked swimming, but also turns out to be just as much of an anti establishment badass as her deceased father.

I wonder if maybe reading all four books one after the other meant that I had League fatigue when reading this one, because it didn't have the same impact on me as the others did. I may well re-read this edition of the series at a later date, as I may have missed something that would make it the equal of the earlier releases.