18 Followers
24 Following
altheaann

altheaann

Currently reading

A Creature of Moonlight
Rebecca Hahn
Saffron And Brimstone: Strange Stories
Elizabeth Hand
Captain Vorpatril's Alliance
Lois McMaster Bujold
Snow in May: Stories
Kseniya Melnik

The Waking Engine

The Waking Engine - David Edison This debut novel shows Edison’s promise as an author. It’s an ambitious tale, displaying depth of imagination and an unbridled love of words.
Comparisons? I’d definitely recommend this for fans of Catherynne Valente’s ‘Palimpsest.’ At times, it also reminded me of Richard Kadrey’s ‘Butcher Bird.’ The language felt very similar to the latter books of Cecilia Dart Thornton’s Bitterbynde Trilogy – and unfortunately, mileage may vary, but to me, that’s not really a good thing. There are some lovely turns of phrase here – but in many places, the language becomes so flowery and overloaded that it serves to obscure rather than illuminate the events being described. I felt there was room for more restraint in the style – to let the language serve the story, rather than vice versa.

The premise: A young New Yorker, Cooper, awakens in The City Unspoken, ‘where the dead come to die.’ You see, the world we know, Earth, is highly unusual, in that everyone here is born. Most places, it’s taken for granted that we have a near-endless succession of lives. The True Death is hard to find, and the City is full of the suicidal, seeking release.
The descriptions of The City are rich and wonderful; making it come alive as the truest character in the books.
Unfortunately, we never get to know Cooper. He seems like a stand-in for the author. We know he’s chubby, gay, wears a Danzig t-shirt, and had a loving family. That’s about it. The reader never really ‘feels’ him as a personality, and although many characters seem to think that he is the center of the strange events occurring in the City, I found myself wondering if he was even necessary to the story at all. As the book moves along, the focus shifts from Cooper, introducing other characters altogether, and their part in the drama seems far more compelling:

Suddenly, the reader finds oneself in the midst of a drama involving a power struggle involving some rarefied, imprisoned aristocrats, and some steampunk/programmer faeries, who are involved in some truly nasty and evil stuff. The fate of the whole City may be at stake… The young aristocrat Purity Kloo emerges as the one-to-watch here…

However, the way things progress, I thought the plot could also have used some tightening up and increased clarity: more flow, less, “Wait, what just happened to who, where?”

The story does a good job of mixing high drama and absurd, low comedy. I even enjoyed the appearance of various historical characters (something I often dislike), including Cleopatra, Nixon, and Walt Whitman (obviously a favorite of the author.) The atmosphere and grotesquerie were right up my alley.

____
I received a copy of this book through NetGalley. Thanks to Netgalley and to Tor Books!