book review: Escapement
Escapement
by: Jay Lake
I’m torn about what to say here. On one hand, I enjoyed the book and the world we are seeing born here is pretty marvelous… but at the same time, throughout the course of my reading I kept wondering where the book was.
By that I mean… in most books there is a sense of “this is where this book is going”, but I didn’t get any of that here. We have three characters moving about independently (and eventually intersecting, of course), but none of them have clear goals. I mean, some of them want to “get to place X”, but that’s not enough. The lead starts out with a more solid goal but when her expectations and knowledge of the world are radically shifted, she then… basically just backtracks?
And the incident with the giant snake in a tank in the city that repairs Boaz? I’m thinking this is just supposed to be illustrative of the madness of the wall, but it felt a bit too out of place and “episodic” for me.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s all an enjoyable read, and the world so far is a really interesting take on the Steampunk thing, I was just a little confused as to the shape of the story. My guess is that the author is still laying groundwork for the world, and more solid concepts of what is actually going on will appear later in the series?
THREE STARS (2.5 + bonus half star for strength of ideas)
Next up: A memoir, two behemoths and Foner – then my stack is empty! I’m kind of looking forward to having an empty reading shelf… something about the possibilities being wide open? We’ll see if I get that far though, I have a feeling I’ll find more to fill it before I even clear it.
I’m sorry, but I hate books like that. I think it’s really obnoxious of the author to anticipate people waiting around for a second or third book to know what’s actually going on. I realize people read it – which…would explain this book review – but for me, it’s just pointless. The end.
Sometimes it works. Nothing here is boring, it just lacks the standard “direction” of most fantasy fiction (which may be a failing of my own conditioning). He’s doing some really interesting things with steampunk christianity here… which I wish were much more fleshed out of course. The books aren’t long (like the 1k monsters I’ve got q’d up)… only 350 pages or so, so it’s not a huge investment… there’s enough here that wordier authors would have spent 3x the pages, which I suppose I’m thankful he didn’t but at the same time wish he had? It’s a weird place to be. We’ll see how the 3rd one goes.
I’ll still read your review. But I won’t be happy about it.
[...] A reader reacts to Escapement — Ambiguous with the liking. [...]