Clockwork Heart: A Penny Dreadful Review
Somewhere
in the multiverse lies Ondinium, a stratified city-state powered by a
lighter-than-air element and governed by a council advised by an enormous
analytical engine. Above this society, between the rigid castes, flit the
Icarii, messengers with fantastic clockwork wings. Behold the wonders of Clockwork Heart by Dru Pagliasotti.
By chance,
the heroine Taya, one of the Icarus messengers, happens to be in a position to
rescue a woman and her child from the Exalted caste – the city’s leaders – from
a sabotaged cable car. She finds herself drawn in to the investigation and the
politics of the upper caste. The sabotaged wire ferry was only the beginning…
The
characters in this book are fantastic. From the dour clockmaker Cristof to
Taya’s conspiracy nut friend Pyke, each and every one seems alive and nuanced.
You could easily believe that they go about their lives when you close the
book, loving, reading, and shopping.
The
world-building, too, is great. The technology is described well enough to give
the reader a good idea of what it looks like and how it works, but not in such
detail that it slows down the plot. The caste system might be a little
confusing at first, because the way this society is set up seems so alien to
most readers, but by the time the reader hits chapter two, he or she has a good
idea of how Ondinium works. The exposition is masterfully handled. In the hands
of a lesser writer, the complexities of this fantastic world might be clumped
together in awkward chunks of text, but in the hands of Dru Pagliassotti, the
information is seamlessly integrated into the narrative.
My only
complaint is that this book isn’t long enough! Clockwork Heart leaves me wanting so much more. It is a fantastic
taste of an entirely new world, and I, like Taya, want to travel and explore
the whole thing.
I give this
excellent book five gears out of five, and would venture to say that it is
essential to any Steampunk reading list. The best thing about Clockwork Heart is that it is the first
of a series.
Your Correspondent From The Bookstore,
Penny J. Merriweather
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