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A review by talne
The Mechanical by Ian Tregillis
3.0
I had rather high hopes for The Mechnical. It was recommended to me by a friend after a lengthy discussion regarding Free Will. He felt this book would be a great follow up to that, and spur on additional discussion.
For most of the book, I felt he was right. And then we got to the end. This book is not a free standing novel. It does not have the typical characters arcs and resolution you would expect. This is absolutely, painfully, part one of three. And that essentially killed the book and its sequels for me. Whatever your feelings about the abundance of trilogies and series in genre fiction today, I feel most will agree that regardless of what point in the series you're at, a novel still needs to have some semblance of completion, some resolution, even if the larger, work-spanning conflict is ongoing. I didn't feel The Mechanical did that at all. Characters barely moved in their growth. If we liken the span of the Alchemy Wars trilogy to a marathon, it feels like we're barely at mile two by the time book one ends. It really was disappointing.
That being said, there are a number of things I loved about the book. The world building was absolutely fantastic. This is a world I would love to visit again, save the above complaints. Tregillis' writing style was riveting most of the time. He tends to be exposition heavy, but his writing style suits that, as I was presented with scenes that came alive more often than not.
A few high points for me:
- The scene between Visser and Bell arguing about Free Will was fantastic. I wish the book had had more of this.
- The allure of Jax, his fellow Machines, and the alchemy that controls them were generally my favorite scenes of the book, especially as we moved later on and the mystery of Visser's bauble started to unravel
All in all, a book I wanted to like a lot more than I did. A book I did like quite a lot until I was nearing the end, and realized this won't have anywhere near the resolution I was hoping for, regardless of book two.
For most of the book, I felt he was right. And then we got to the end. This book is not a free standing novel. It does not have the typical characters arcs and resolution you would expect. This is absolutely, painfully, part one of three. And that essentially killed the book and its sequels for me. Whatever your feelings about the abundance of trilogies and series in genre fiction today, I feel most will agree that regardless of what point in the series you're at, a novel still needs to have some semblance of completion, some resolution, even if the larger, work-spanning conflict is ongoing. I didn't feel The Mechanical did that at all. Characters barely moved in their growth. If we liken the span of the Alchemy Wars trilogy to a marathon, it feels like we're barely at mile two by the time book one ends. It really was disappointing.
That being said, there are a number of things I loved about the book. The world building was absolutely fantastic. This is a world I would love to visit again, save the above complaints. Tregillis' writing style was riveting most of the time. He tends to be exposition heavy, but his writing style suits that, as I was presented with scenes that came alive more often than not.
A few high points for me:
Spoiler
- The scene between Visser and Bell arguing about Free Will was fantastic. I wish the book had had more of this.
- The allure of Jax, his fellow Machines, and the alchemy that controls them were generally my favorite scenes of the book, especially as we moved later on and the mystery of Visser's bauble started to unravel
All in all, a book I wanted to like a lot more than I did. A book I did like quite a lot until I was nearing the end, and realized this won't have anywhere near the resolution I was hoping for, regardless of book two.