A little story by Kipling you might like

In the course of my research, I stumbled across a little story by the fabulous Rudyard Kipling. It's called "The Ship that Found Herself", and I found it intriguing for several reasons.

1. It's a genre-buster, which, as you probably know, makes it of particular interest to me: it's sort of a sea adventure, sort of a humor piece, sort of a fantasy, and DEFINITELY strongly within the steampunk realm.

2. The plot is very, very subtly done — so subtly, you find you are riveted to it (that's actually self-referential, which you will see when you read the story) without quite knowing why. Then you get to the end, which reveals itself to be a very satisfying ending indeed. A highly useful case study in plotting.

3. Kipling was a wickedly funny writer when he was in the mood. There are grins aplenty here. (At least, I found it funny.)

4. It's by no means one of Kipling's most famous stories — even so, I find I enjoy it at least as much as several of the (much more famous) ones in the Jungle Books (first and second). I feel compelled by loyalty and honesty to add, however, that the Jungle Books as a whole are amongst my very favorite things I've ever read in my whole entire life, I love them completely, and I will not hear a word against them.

It's a cause simultaneously for rejoicing and despair that there are so many, many little gems like this out there — joy because of the discoveries that await; despair because we only have so long to get to them, and there are more every minute, and we'll never, ever be able to read them all, no, never! *sob*