The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

By -
The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, by Natasha Pulley

Jenny reviewed this book a while ago and I was intrigued enough to get it from the library, though I was not sure I would like it.  I'm still not sure whether I liked it!

In an alternate Victorian London, telegraph clerk Thaniel Steepleton* has a mysterious gold watch show up in his lodgings.  Six months later, the watch saves him from an Irish bomb.  The bombing is not very interesting, but the watch is; where did it come from?  Thaniel finds Keita Mori, a Japanese watchmaker with some fairly stunning inventions and something odd about him.  Much of the story is dedicated to figuring out just what Mori's mystery is, and what it means.

We also have Grace, who wants to be a physicist but is hemmed in by family demands that she marry.  I found her to be an awkward character; I don't love where she fits into the story, I don't know why she is at Oxford, despising classicists, when Cambridge is where the science is at and also they accepted women students first, and could she really get a chair in either location?  It's interesting that she's after proving the existence of aether, which may actually exist in this version of the universe, but otherwise she does bizarre things.  

It's almost steampunk, but the clockwork is too pretty.  I kind of liked this novel, and I was also frequently annoyed by it.  I am distinctly ambivalent about the whole thing, including the cover, which I want to love but which may just be too much.  And that might be how I feel about the story too.

If you've read this, let's argue about Grace in the comments!

 _________________________
*Thaniel?  Dude, really?  He even apologizes for it in the story, but that is not enough.

Comments

  1. LynneAugust 1, 2017 at 7:38 AM

    I can't argue with you because I felt the same way about the whole thing, including Grace.

    ReplyDelete
  2. LoryAugust 1, 2017 at 9:25 AM

    I didn't like it (sorry, Jenny). Some interesting ideas but the historical setting was not convincing, the magic/science seemed contrived, and too often the whole thing felt unduly complicated for no good reason. Plus, no explanation for why Mori is the way he is with time -- unless I missed something? At the end I felt sort of annoyed and frustrated. Sad, because it sounded so good!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Kristen M.August 3, 2017 at 1:04 AM

    Reading this and seeing Lynne and Lory's comments, I am so happy I quit this after a couple dozen pages! I HATED the nickname Thaniel, did not understand some of the stuff Grace did right away, and, like Lory says, found the historical setting totally unconvincing. The most annoying this is that I bought the gorgeous hardcover and then had to get rid of it barely used! ;)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the source of the s
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he defeats or avoids th
Read more