Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Mainspring by Jay Lake


This adult fantasy novel strongly reminded me of some young adult fantasies I have been reading--The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick, The Hungry City Chronicles by Phillip Reeve, and Kenneth Oppel's Airborn series. It's the combination of clockwork, automatons, and airships that made me feel this novel wasn't anything new. It was an okay read, but I didn't feel like anything new came out of it.

Hethor is a clockworker's apprentice who is unfairly pushed out of his position after a visit from the angel Gabriel. The earth's clock is winding down and Hethor can sense its slowness. And so begins the quest. Hethor visits the strange southern hemisphere, meets many strange creatures (think Patterson's Maximum Ride) and finds love with a monkey-ish woman.

I won't be purchasing this for my high school library. Some scenes were thrown into the book as an afterthought and didn't fit the storyline at all. The plot moved along slowly and I think the young adult novels that I mentioned earlier are much better reads.

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