Escapement
by Jay Lake
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jay LakeEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-03-03
ISBN: 0765356376
Number of pages: 480
Publisher: Tor Science Fiction
Book Reviews of Escapement
Book Review: Better than the first book -- but please read them in order!
Summary: 4 Stars
I finished reading Jay Lake's "Escapement" this morning. I enjoyed the book, which I found to be richer and deeper than "Mainspring", the first book in Lake's Clockwork Trilogy. ("Pinion", the third book in the trilogy, is currently available in trade paperback.) I don't have time for a full review, but I do want to comment on three things that the existing reviews on Amazon.com appear to have gotten wrong:
1. Read "Mainspring" first. Most of the people who have reviewed "Escapement" on Amazon.com appear not to have read the first book in the trilogy, and I think that has affected both their understanding of and their emotional engagement with the second book. While it is possible to read and mostly understand "Escapement" on its own, the first book eases the reader into the spirit of Lake's work in a way that the second does not.
2. Don't expect a religious tract. This trilogy is a "what if?" story: What if the world was so obviously designed and built by an intelligent hand that nobody could deny the fact? Lake's answer is, essentially, that religion isn't about objective facts, it's about what people make of the objective facts, and even really big, obvious, objective facts can produce many distinct (and possibly warring) subjective interpretations. It's more difficult to say what Lake wants us to make of the magical (and possibly Divine) events that occur, such as the appearance of Archangel Gabriel to young Hethor in "Mainspring", but I (a) hope that he provides some clarification in "Pinion" and (b) think that he's mainly just playing around with his own authorial role as God the Creator of this fictional world.
3. Don't expect pure steampunk, pure clockpunk, or pure anything. I would describe these books as fantasy with steampunk/clockpunk trappings, religious interests, mildly archaic language, and picaresque tendencies, leavened with a bit of science fictional narrative distance and fascination with weird technologies. As a science fiction fan who sometimes reads fantasy and who has no special interest in steampunk or clockpunk, this is fine by me, but readers who are heavily invested in *punk subgenres may be put off.
Lake's Clockwork Trilogy does not represent a major breakthrough in fiction, and I doubt it will bring on many religious epiphanies, but it is (at least in the first two books) well-written, packed with adventure, spiced with nice bits of weirdness, and sufficiently thought-provoking to avoid being filed in the "empty escapism" bin.
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