Mechanique (Genevieve Valentine)

The Mechanical Circus Tresaulti travels a wide circuit. Little George, who has grown up in the circus, knows that the Boss calls them 'the circus that survives.' In a time of war, the circus travels from city to city with its astonishing feats, giving poor and tired spectators one night of entertainment from a harsh and unforgiving landscape. Thankfully, this mechanical circus survives because of Boss and her terrible secret. But all secrets must come to light. Genevieve Valentine's Mechanique A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti is a tale of creation and consequence, flying and falling.

At the heart of this steampunk tale are wings made of gilded bone, worn in the finale for years, when they still had the Winged Man act. Now, two of their acrobats, Stenos and Bird, desire it for themselves, without knowing what it can do to its owner. While the wings are pivotal to the story, I am constantly drawn to the other steampunk elements of the story, most notably the circus characters. I think that Panadrome, a one-man band with a tragic history, fully captures what the Circus Tresaulti is about.

Aside from Panadrome, the other characters are all well-fleshed out, pardon the irony. My favorites include Little George, who took on the important first-person perspective in some chapters; Ying, a young orphan who came to the circus at a very young age and who didn’t really know what she was signing up for when she joined; and Bird. There is an innocence in the first two characters that summon powerful contrasts in a story like Mechanique,reminding the reader how humanity can be easily lost because of bitterness and poverty. And Bird? I don't know. I still don't know what it is exactly about her that makes her larger-than-life, fearsome and vulnerable at the same time; I only know that she's a character that stays with me long after the book has ended.

Mechanique is told in vignettes. These snippets and drabbles are not always chronological but they're careful enough not to mess with the attentive reader. It’s also told in various points-of-view and even shifts tenses. So how does it get away with it? Maybe it's the language; the whole thing reads like poetry. It’s just that beautiful. You really get caught up in the moment and read the book as you would experience a multi-act circus. Snatches of what could be real, what could be imagined. Lines blurring because you blinked. Don't let this one pass you by.

The Trident of Merrow (Amber Marshall & Kristopher Lewis)

Readers who enjoy their adventure stirred with some romance will find much to like in The Trident of Merrow. The story moves swiftly, following two separate crews: the Sea Drake, where Tosh is imprisoned by the pirate Jebediah Blud and a powerful Strega witch with an agenda, and the Gallows Jig, captained by Tosh’s childhood friend Germaine . From mutiny and sea monsters to airships and ancient rituals, The Trident of Merrow delivers action at a blistering pace.

The first pages immediately throw the reader into Tosh’s world: not just a swift mapping of the circumstances surrounding her current life but also a taste of the place she inhabits. She and her father live in Kingsport but their lives and trade revolve around the Shardsea. By the end of the chapter (it must be noted that the chapters are relatively short), Tosh’s adventure is already well underway. The action is instinctive. It sweeps the readers from the sea into the air; one can almost hear the John Williams soundtrack.

I liked how the magic elements were handled here. Ships employ a weather mage, with limited but useful abilities to calm huge waves or dispel a fog, but who can also appeal to and negotiate with various elementals to help them with more difficult tasks. I also enjoyed reading about the melding of magic and technology; at one point they even use it to create the Aquan equivalent of a missile.

Another interesting aspect of the story is its mythology. Aquan gods and goddesses are binaries: brothers and sisters are also rivals locked in battle. For instance, the Strega witches worship the Abyssal Lord Merrow as the god of the sea while sailors believe in Tryta, the Harlot Mother of Tides. I thought this framed the other binaries of the narrative quite nicely: magic and technology, the Gallows Jig and the Sea Drake, the Rozinante and the Colossus, Germaine and Massimo.

Unfortunately, Tosh is not as strong a character as she first appears to be. It’s evident that the authors tried to distance her from other literary damsels in distress by making her useful and allowing her attempts to rescue herself from her captors (she’s a steam mechanic, with life skills that come in handy once in a while). But there’s something about her that just falls short of being a compelling and relatable lead. It seemed rather unfortunate that the story’s main conflict revolved around Tosh and Massimo when they could be counted among the weaker characters.

However, that doesn’t diminish the impact of the other characters in the story. The Brinhold twins, Brion and Gage, are colorful members of the team who present interesting perspectives. Their backstory alone paints an intriguing culture and dynamic that I hope can be further explored should the authors choose to expand the book into a series. There is also Ama, the resident Manic Pixie Girl-type, an endearing addition to the story even if she only appears in the latter half of the book. Even Germaine, the knight errant, has moments of conflict and introspection, which surprised me because I had expected him to be a one-dimensional character. They might all fill certain stock roles, but they evade the predictability of their tropes just enough to ensure that the story remains memorable.

Despite the non-stop adventure, readers are constantly reminded that The Trident of Merrow is also a romance. In fact, it ends with a realization on Tosh’s behalf regarding the nature of love: not as a rosy-colored, sugar-coated fantasy [but]... seeing someone at their worst, a filthy keening animal. Wise words, but when concluded by someone whose own romance unfolds like the nautical equivalent of the Stockholm Syndrome, it just doesn’t deliver the desired impact. It’s actually the romances in the story that prevent me from fully enjoying the story; sometimes it can get cloying, other times just plain confusing.

Though The Trident of Merrow winds down to a predictable conclusion (the final confrontation with the Big Bad seems almost anti-climactic), there are a lot of moments in the journey that are exhilarating. Young adult readers will enjoy this alternative to the sword-and-sorcery medieval fantasy, and even older ones won’t regret a brief afternoon spent lost among the waves of the Shardsea.


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This review is cross-posted to Adarna SF. The author provided a free copy for this review.

The Infernal Devices Book Two: Clockwork Prince (Cassandra Clare)

Ever since I read Cassandra Clare's Clockwork Angel, I've been eagerly awaiting its sequel. Clockwork Prince still has a lot of the elements that I enjoyed from the first book, especially the melding of Victorian romance and fantasy -- a true guilty pleasure read for me. But I have to admit that I was a bit disappointed by the absence of a pronounced challenge posed by the Magister's automatons, despite a grand battle with one of them at the book's climax. However, it just felt that it was missing the fear of the unknown that had sparked the incidents of the first book: the Clave didn't know who or what they were up against, and I thought that effectively highlighted each character's way of reacting to and coping with conflict. Since in this sequel they already know who they're dealing with, it didn't feel as exciting to me as the first book had been.

I'm getting ahead of myself. Clockwork Prince is meant to be a transition book: the Institute, led by (my favorite characters in the series) the young Charlotte Branwell and her absent-minded husband Henry, is on the trail of the Magister. Their investigations reveal that he is driven by revenge, not greed, and despite his absence he has left others to do his work. Readers also find out more about Will and Jem, the Institute's teenage Shadowhunters, and Tessa finally makes a choice between them.

I'm not too sold on the conflict/resolution introduced here about Will's behavior towards people. He was already a bit Jace 2.0 (from her Mortal Instruments trilogy) but it was something I overlooked in the beginning because I had faith that he would have a different story. But with the latest development, I think he just grew more into his Jace skin. Jem also does something here that I question given his condition, and I'm not inclined to dismiss this easily knowing that he had refused to be Will's parabatai before. It makes me feel that I'm re-learning their characters all over again. It still makes for an interesting read when you realize that there is more to the characters that you didn't consider before, but it runs the risk of them coming out as uneven and inconsistent. Despite not being as enjoyable as Clockwork Angel had been, I still look forward to reading more of the London Institute. There is enough action and promise here to anticipate a highly-charged conclusion.

Look Homeward, Clockwork Angel (Elias Anderson & EC Belikov)

Though the premise of Look Homeward, Clockwork Angel makes it look like your standard-issue adventure fare, it plumbs unexpected depths to make the reading experience quite worth your while. It opens strong on the action as it tells the story of the crew of the airship Masamune: its captain Violet, mechanic Tibbs, and former Inspector Moriarty now on the wrong side of the law.

The prose is certainly hardworking. It never lets the reader forget its steampunk roots as it weaves generous descriptions and terminologies into the alternative western story. I didn't feel that there was an excess of information provided; the wordbuilding was on-key. Unfortunately, there are times when the text descends into dry, almost didactic narrative of the tell, not show variety ('Moriarty now sat down to a hot meal and thought back at that fiery day, seven months ago, when what was now his family, for better or worse, had come together' p20) and forced sentiment (Violet compares a suitor to 'a lone rose in the middle of a pallid desert wasteland' p32). Thankfully, the uneveness doesn't last long. At 30,000 or so words, things tend to move pretty quickly. Aside from an obligatory origin chapter, the action is managed well, each move calculated, nothing wasted.

I was ready to write this off as a run-of-the-mill action-adventure story when the last few chapters happened. This is when things really get interesting, and it switches the dynamic of the story from a oneshot adventure session into a harsh moral dilemma. Although there are already hints of issues cropping up in previous chapters (most intriguing for me was the Augmentation Society and its implications), what occurs in the last third of the book is a major turning point not just for the story but for the world it inhabits.

I thought the characters here were a mixed bag. Take Violet, the captain. I don't adhere to the school of thought that to escape female stereotypes, a beautiful woman must be anti-female; in this novella, Violet hates dresses and heels, hates being ordered for, hates being reminded that she is a woman. Even when her past is revealed and in the light of what had happened to her, I believe we can expect more challenging characterizations from our authors than the shopworn variety. I'm also not convinced of Moriarty's role in this enterprise. I'm guessing his presence in the triumvirate is to be the moral compass, the everyman that may give the readers familiar ground, but so far there is little development in his area. The most intriguing character in my opinion is Tibbs, whom at first I had written off as a mere third wheel. In the course of the novel he had leaped to the forefront as a gamechanger. Most of your questions about the characters are answered by the time the novella closes, and I appreciated that the authors didn't feel the need to tease the readers more than was necessary.

One thing that greatly bothered me in this book was the way Violet, Moriarty, and Tibbs treated Harris, a secondary character who had the job they needed to fulfill theirs. Suffice to say that it left me just as horrified as what Parker had been doing at his ranch. Whether it had been deliberately made to add to the existing issues of the book or not, it had me reassessing my opinion of the crew.

Let's talk marketing and branding for a moment. Judging books by their cover is a reader-response that most authors must deal with. Look Homeward, Clockwork Angel's own cover is cleanly-executed but it has grim and serious quality to it. While it does echoes the heavier themes that the novella bravely tackles, I also think the tough alternative western, action-adventure aspect of the novella could be further highlighted to draw more interest to the e-book. Another suggestion would be tighter editing. The western slang adds color and can't be faulted, but the novella could use another editing eye (with careful attention to comma use).

Despite my problems with the uneven prose, I still found this a solid effort and a laudably courageous start. It looks like there is plenty to look forward to -- both in action and in character growth -- as the rest of the series unfolds.

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This review is cross-posted to Adarna SF. The authors provided a free copy for this review.

The Infernal Devices Book One: Clockwork Angel (Cassandra Clare)

I didn't really expect to read Cassandra Clare's His Mortal Instruments Trilogy until I volunteered to 'test' it for my boss' daughter. While I wouldn't count it among my favorites, the series was still fun and I'd recommend it for some light reading. Too bad I thought some of the themes were too mature for my boss' sixth-grade daughter.

When one of my favorite store clerks recommended the news Cassandra Clare series, I was only moderately pleased. But that was before I read the blurb: Victorian England! Fantasy! Romance! Victorian England! (Yes, Bibliarch Glorietta, you have done a good job again.)

As far as first books go, I found Clockwork Angel a more engaging read than City of Bones and not because I am more fascinated with turn-of-the-century London than modern-day America. Angel's Tessa Gray proved to be a more fleshed-out heroine than Mortal Instruments' Clary. In the story, a shadowy figure called The Magister is eager to get his hands on Tessa's unique shapeshifting abilities. Her only recourse is to turn to the Shadowhunters for help, Nephilim who fight to protect the world from demons and to keep order among those known as the Downworlders. For Tessa, who shares society's very traditional views and has an unfailing loyalty to her family, being with the Shadowhunters is a test of her character and strength, especially as she must work with them to find the truth behind The Magister's growing threat. Tessa's ability to change her appearance after touching another's possession and then actually feel her new form's thoughts and emotions is not just unique to Ms Clare's Shadowhunter world, but is also a refreshing touch to the old shapeshifter story.

Fans of The Mortal Instruments will love how this new series explores the original characters' ancestors, but new readers will definitely feel that they need to read TMI to enjoy this. The action in Clockwork Angel unfolds quickly (finished this book in less than a day), though rather predictably. The characters are the real draw, in my opinion. I found Tessa more likable than most YA fantasy leads, and at the same time, I was also fascinated by two new characters: husband-and-wife team Henry and Charlotte. Charlotte is repeatedly called on to prove that she is a worthy leader of the Shadowhunter Institute despite her youth and inexperience, while struggling to find her place beside a husband who seems to prefer the company of his machines and inventions more than his own wife's. And as most YA fantasies go, there is a love story, too, but I'm not too attached to it. Yet.

Truth be told, Ms Clare's new series has now jumped into my Guilty Pleasures List. It definitely has all the right elements I need to distract me from the less-than-exciting things that go on between waking up and falling asleep.