Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.77 AVERAGE
3.77 AVERAGE
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
My first by this author and I found it atmospheric and absorbing. Time-related shenanigans usually make my brain hurt and this was no exception, but I really liked the sense of place and the central love story.
I had a few issues with the role the main female character plays - her actions at the end just didn't make sense to me - but overall I enjoyed it (particularly the clockwork octopus who steals socks!) and I'll be carrying on with the series.
I had a few issues with the role the main female character plays - her actions at the end just didn't make sense to me - but overall I enjoyed it (particularly the clockwork octopus who steals socks!) and I'll be carrying on with the series.
Half a star for Grace not being bland and boring
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
When I described this book to my wife, she said it sounded like [a:Neil Stephenson|1976950|Neil Stephenson|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] on Quaaludes. You have an interesting setting (Victorian era London with glimpses of Japan), intriguing protagonists (a highly proficient telegraphist with synesthesia, a Oxford student who is trying to prove the existence of the ether, and the eponymous watchmaker who appears far too talented), and some compelling plot turns (including a bombing and a staging of a comic opera).
But that's all the Stephenson stuff. The Quaalude portion of the book is the pacing (incredibly slow at times) and the tone. In many ways, this feels like a cosy --- nothing is ever too dire, and everything gets wrapped up nearly perfectly. Moreover, first you think you're reading a slice of life work, then you're reading a crime novel, and then you're reading a romance --- I found the change in focus coupled with the lack of urgency confusing. It did not help that every three pages or so, I found myself struggling with a lack of clarity in the prose. ("Who's talking right now? What does that antecedent refer to?") A lot of nice ingredients, but the mixing and the cooking lacked appeal for me.
But that's all the Stephenson stuff. The Quaalude portion of the book is the pacing (incredibly slow at times) and the tone. In many ways, this feels like a cosy --- nothing is ever too dire, and everything gets wrapped up nearly perfectly. Moreover, first you think you're reading a slice of life work, then you're reading a crime novel, and then you're reading a romance --- I found the change in focus coupled with the lack of urgency confusing. It did not help that every three pages or so, I found myself struggling with a lack of clarity in the prose. ("Who's talking right now? What does that antecedent refer to?") A lot of nice ingredients, but the mixing and the cooking lacked appeal for me.
SPOILER-FREE REVIEW (spoilers in the next section of the review)
This was a lovely book with very clever plotting, pretty original characters, and a sweet and quiet romance between two men. I have read a number of other reviewers saying that they felt the romance came out of the blue and I have two comments regarding that: 1) It's true that a lot of the romantic buildup was subtextual and while the romance very much drove the entire plot it was rarely very explicit or at the front of the narration. To be fair, most things in this book remained subtextual, and that was something I loved about it. 2) The subtext for the romance was 100% there and present from extremely early in the book. The author very clearly implied that Thaniel was paying attention to Mori's physical appearance and was attracted to him from their first in-person interaction.
Would I have preferred more explicit emphasis on the romance? Yes. But that's not every book and not this particular book and I'm not complaining.
Similarly, I've seen a lot of complaints about the slow-moving plot and I definitely disagree with those. The book had a real plot (aside from the bombings-mystery) and a real villain (aside from the bombers) but it's just that the villain is probably pretty likable to a lot of the readers so it can be hard to see. Without giving too much away, I would just comment that the real plot of the book started out rather slow-moving and then built in speed inexorably until the conclusion at which point things were quite fast-moving.
I really appreciated how the author portrayed the anti-Asian racism of the characters and didn't gloss over or reduce it for the comfort of the white reader. As a white reader myself I definitely found it uncomfortable at times but it felt fairly accurate, and mild at that. I did very often have trouble distinguishing between the racism of the characters and the racism of the author. I think most of the time the author has plausible deniability in that all the narration is in the voice of one character or another and it's true that the racism of the narrator vanishes when Mori or another Japanese character is narrating, diminishes with time when Thaniel is narrating, and stays pretty uniform in time when other white characters are narrating. But I still found it hard to parse and felt constantly kind of mentally assaulted by the upsettingly racist and dehumanizing thoughts of a lot of the characters. I don't know how uncomfortable it may have made a reader of east-Asian descent from a majority-white country, or what their impressions might be, and I would be very interested in reading reviews by such readers (I'll have to keep looking for these).
SPOILERS AHEAD
Here I'm going to discuss the book plot elements in detail and talk about what I liked and didn't like since I know that this will all come below the cut.
The fact that Mori apparently learned his highland British English from his "memories" of Thaniel just about broke my heart.
When Mori casually threatened Grace for trying to keep Thaniel in a rich house without a piano, I swooned. He loves Thaniel so much!! I'm not entirely sure why he loves Thaniel so much but anything Mori does is compelling. He's right that she emotionally blackmailed Thaniel with the promise of money and school for his nephews but doesn't appear to be interested in providing Thaniel the means to live out his most satisfying life as a pianist the way she's providing for herself to live as a physicist.
Anyway, Grace is a great antagonist. She's the worst and I really dislike her, but she's a great villain. She claims she was just trying to make it seem like Mori had let her get hurt in a preventable way, to turn Thaniel against him. But I can't help but believe she was actually trying to frame Mori for the bombing and get him sent to prison and out of their lives. And she risked so many other people to do it!!
When Thaniel called him Keita, since "first names are only for who you're married to" ❤❤❤
Okay, so I loved how the author pulled a great plot-switch. We come into the narrative thinking that the main protagonist is Thaniel and the primary plot is about the mystery of which watchmaker is behind these clockwork bombs but it turns out that the entire sequence of events was about Mori trying to reach the future he wanted where he and Thaniel could both choose to be together in a way that gave Thaniel agency and the ability to choose. He didn't want to deprive Thaniel of the opportunity to choose a life with Grace but also wanted to prevent *Grace* from taking Thaniel's choices away from him (which she was hell-bent on doing). The whole story was about Mori's struggle to find this balance between bringing him and Thaniel together despite the forces arrayed against them but preserving Thaniel's ability to choose. And all told from Thaniel's perspective instead of Mori's in order to preserve the suspense and mystery for the reader. Very interestingly and well done. Mori is such a compelling character, I love him so much. He really is just the gentlest, most introverted genius but every now and then we'd see that he had a hard edge and did not come to play.
Grace was a great villain because she was so relatable and sympathetic but it was only slowly revealed what a selfish, sociopathic person she was (is sociopathic too strong a word? I don't think so). I'm a female physicist, so I loved everything about her desire for the freedom to conduct her experiments. But she really didn't care who she hurt to get there. She emotionally blackmailed Thaniel into marrying her so his family could have financial security, she tried to frame Mori for the bombings to get him put in prison and out of her way, she didn't care who she hurt or killed by setting off a bomb in the middle of Japan-town during a theater performance. If the racism in her internal monologue is anything to go by, that last part is probably because she doesn't appear to see the Japanese characters as full people. She sees her beau Matsumoto as an exception to his race at every turn. Even at the very end, humbled as she was by her failure and by Mori's arrangement of Grace and Matsumoto's reunion, she thinks about how Matsumoto is supposedly taller than an average Japanese man because he grew up eating British food! I can't handle it.
Anyway, I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it!
This was a lovely book with very clever plotting, pretty original characters, and a sweet and quiet romance between two men. I have read a number of other reviewers saying that they felt the romance came out of the blue and I have two comments regarding that: 1) It's true that a lot of the romantic buildup was subtextual and while the romance very much drove the entire plot it was rarely very explicit or at the front of the narration. To be fair, most things in this book remained subtextual, and that was something I loved about it. 2) The subtext for the romance was 100% there and present from extremely early in the book. The author very clearly implied that Thaniel was paying attention to Mori's physical appearance and was attracted to him from their first in-person interaction.
Would I have preferred more explicit emphasis on the romance? Yes. But that's not every book and not this particular book and I'm not complaining.
Similarly, I've seen a lot of complaints about the slow-moving plot and I definitely disagree with those. The book had a real plot (aside from the bombings-mystery) and a real villain (aside from the bombers) but it's just that the villain is probably pretty likable to a lot of the readers so it can be hard to see. Without giving too much away, I would just comment that the real plot of the book started out rather slow-moving and then built in speed inexorably until the conclusion at which point things were quite fast-moving.
I really appreciated how the author portrayed the anti-Asian racism of the characters and didn't gloss over or reduce it for the comfort of the white reader. As a white reader myself I definitely found it uncomfortable at times but it felt fairly accurate, and mild at that. I did very often have trouble distinguishing between the racism of the characters and the racism of the author. I think most of the time the author has plausible deniability in that all the narration is in the voice of one character or another and it's true that the racism of the narrator vanishes when Mori or another Japanese character is narrating, diminishes with time when Thaniel is narrating, and stays pretty uniform in time when other white characters are narrating. But I still found it hard to parse and felt constantly kind of mentally assaulted by the upsettingly racist and dehumanizing thoughts of a lot of the characters. I don't know how uncomfortable it may have made a reader of east-Asian descent from a majority-white country, or what their impressions might be, and I would be very interested in reading reviews by such readers (I'll have to keep looking for these).
SPOILERS AHEAD
Here I'm going to discuss the book plot elements in detail and talk about what I liked and didn't like since I know that this will all come below the cut.
The fact that Mori apparently learned his highland British English from his "memories" of Thaniel just about broke my heart.
When Mori casually threatened Grace for trying to keep Thaniel in a rich house without a piano, I swooned. He loves Thaniel so much!! I'm not entirely sure why he loves Thaniel so much but anything Mori does is compelling. He's right that she emotionally blackmailed Thaniel with the promise of money and school for his nephews but doesn't appear to be interested in providing Thaniel the means to live out his most satisfying life as a pianist the way she's providing for herself to live as a physicist.
Anyway, Grace is a great antagonist. She's the worst and I really dislike her, but she's a great villain. She claims she was just trying to make it seem like Mori had let her get hurt in a preventable way, to turn Thaniel against him. But I can't help but believe she was actually trying to frame Mori for the bombing and get him sent to prison and out of their lives. And she risked so many other people to do it!!
When Thaniel called him Keita, since "first names are only for who you're married to" ❤❤❤
Okay, so I loved how the author pulled a great plot-switch. We come into the narrative thinking that the main protagonist is Thaniel and the primary plot is about the mystery of which watchmaker is behind these clockwork bombs but it turns out that the entire sequence of events was about Mori trying to reach the future he wanted where he and Thaniel could both choose to be together in a way that gave Thaniel agency and the ability to choose. He didn't want to deprive Thaniel of the opportunity to choose a life with Grace but also wanted to prevent *Grace* from taking Thaniel's choices away from him (which she was hell-bent on doing). The whole story was about Mori's struggle to find this balance between bringing him and Thaniel together despite the forces arrayed against them but preserving Thaniel's ability to choose. And all told from Thaniel's perspective instead of Mori's in order to preserve the suspense and mystery for the reader. Very interestingly and well done. Mori is such a compelling character, I love him so much. He really is just the gentlest, most introverted genius but every now and then we'd see that he had a hard edge and did not come to play.
Grace was a great villain because she was so relatable and sympathetic but it was only slowly revealed what a selfish, sociopathic person she was (is sociopathic too strong a word? I don't think so). I'm a female physicist, so I loved everything about her desire for the freedom to conduct her experiments. But she really didn't care who she hurt to get there. She emotionally blackmailed Thaniel into marrying her so his family could have financial security, she tried to frame Mori for the bombings to get him put in prison and out of her way, she didn't care who she hurt or killed by setting off a bomb in the middle of Japan-town during a theater performance. If the racism in her internal monologue is anything to go by, that last part is probably because she doesn't appear to see the Japanese characters as full people. She sees her beau Matsumoto as an exception to his race at every turn. Even at the very end, humbled as she was by her failure and by Mori's arrangement of Grace and Matsumoto's reunion, she thinks about how Matsumoto is supposedly taller than an average Japanese man because he grew up eating British food! I can't handle it.
Anyway, I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it!
It was a very enjoyable read - a rather slow pace and the action is limited, but it's a beautifully descriptive, magical and cosy read!
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated