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A review by crackityjones
The Clockwork Dynasty by Daniel H. Wilson
1.0
Absolutely dire.
I honestly don't even know where to start with this one. The plot is both paper thin and somehow, simultaneously, very confusing; the characters are so flat they practically don't exist; the writing, which is workable at least on a sentence level, is a giant mess. The Clockwork Dynasty is, when it manages to be anything at all, incredibly trite. I'm a very critical reader, but I've worked in this industry for a long time - I can generally figure out what other people like about a book even if I hated it. This one has me stumped, though.
Our story, such as it is, starts with Jane's grandfather, a Soviet soldier in WWII. The prologue is a requisite description of the Horrors of War which falls inexplicably flat. During one pivotal battle, the Grandfather sees some sort of Avenging Super Soldier drop an artifact which he collects and later shows to Jane. This artifact sparks her lifelong interest in archaeology, specifically the study of automatons, which people seem to know exist, although they haven't yet realized that the automatons are sentient and secretly run the world.
We pick up in the present, where Jane is visiting an old automaton held by some separatist Russian church in rural Oregon. The automaton spells out a message when she figures out how to activate it, but it doesn't matter, because Jane has no agency in this plot and is not allowed to investigate anything further. Instead she is immediately set upon by an Evil Robot, after potentially being sold out by her guide. There is a brief mention of Jane's funding being cut off, because her benefactor is also an Evil Robot, and then there is an Interminable Action Scene (LITERAL CHAPTERS) whose apparent aim is making me forget that there is no reason for Jane to be in this book.
Jane is rescued by Peter, a Hot Robot whose POV chapters are largely set in the 1700s, until the latter portion of the book when we need to learn that he was the Avenging Super Soldier from the prologue. It is a shocking revelation and I am sorry to have spoiled it for you. Peter's chapters are about his awakening, his relationship with his sister (a robot with, very practically, a child's body), and the various wars in which he fought. See, each robot has a Word etched into its Relic (an Important Robot Part, which, when reunited with a Robot's body, can bring it back to life) which it must follow, and Peter thinks that his word means that he must take part in human wars. The war chapters are both boring and largely irrelevant to the plot, so I'm pleased to report that there are a LOT of them.
The book's structure - Peter and Jane alternate first person, present tense chapters, Jane's set in the modern day and Peter's in the past - makes it difficult to summarize the plot as it's told in the book, but fortunately almost nothing of relevance happens. Peter was supposed to guard the Relic of Huang Di, his Robot Ruler. In shirking this duty, he pissed off his sister who started a School For Girls. This gets more page time than is really warranted. In the present, Jane is now the owner of this relic, and she and Peter set off on an Adventure so that they can wake Huang Di. They are pursued by Leizu, an Evil Robot, and her Evil Robot goon (it appears that in hundreds of years she has found only one follower). I would hazard a guess that at least 60% of this book is action scenes. The plot, when it finally congeals in the final thirty pages, makes almost no sense and left me confusedly rooting for Leizu, who seems to have been in the right before abruptly losing her mind and deciding to murder everyone for no clear reason. I think that both Huang Di and Leizu end up dead at the end of this book, but if I'm being perfectly honest, I have no idea what actually happened during the final battle.
I will say that Peter's chapters are better than Jane's by miles. I do not think that this is because, as a robot, he is supposed to have a flat effect; I think it's because Jane is a gigantic absence of a person. The book insists that she is passionate about archaeology, but even if that's the case (I'll toss it a bone, here) I cannot fathom why she tags along on Peter's Robot Adventures. Is it because he's hot? I know nothing about Jane's personal life, hopes, dreams, or interests except for that she likes archaeology and she thinks that Peter is hot. There are whiffs of "I'm not like other girls" after her obligatory makeover scene*, but even that isn't strong enough to be offensive. Do I think that the author has never read a single thing written by a woman? I'd bet money on it! Somehow, even that fails to offend.
I read in the Willamette Week that this book "was optioned by 20th Century Fox before it was even written." And you know what? It reads like a script. When I watch an action movie I expect the characters to be tools that move the audience from one action scene to another; I suspend my disbelief about the questionable plot points. I'm not watching to learn something about the human condition, I just want to see shit explode. But that doesn't work for a book, because it turns out that reading about a series of intensifying explosions isn't very interesting. There is a reason that I think books will survive in our increasingly digital age, and that's because books aren't the same kind of storytelling as movies or TV shows or even comics. Even the best movies are still movies. And that's fine! Everything in its place. But the place for this book is very clearly on the big screen, and I wish that publishers would realize that there is a difference.
*I though I could leave this alone, but can we talk about the weird thing where suddenly they're on a personal jet to a private shopping spree and Jane gets a makeover because Peter is secretly rich? Absolutely baffling.
I honestly don't even know where to start with this one. The plot is both paper thin and somehow, simultaneously, very confusing; the characters are so flat they practically don't exist; the writing, which is workable at least on a sentence level, is a giant mess. The Clockwork Dynasty is, when it manages to be anything at all, incredibly trite. I'm a very critical reader, but I've worked in this industry for a long time - I can generally figure out what other people like about a book even if I hated it. This one has me stumped, though.
Our story, such as it is, starts with Jane's grandfather, a Soviet soldier in WWII. The prologue is a requisite description of the Horrors of War which falls inexplicably flat. During one pivotal battle, the Grandfather sees some sort of Avenging Super Soldier drop an artifact which he collects and later shows to Jane. This artifact sparks her lifelong interest in archaeology, specifically the study of automatons, which people seem to know exist, although they haven't yet realized that the automatons are sentient and secretly run the world.
We pick up in the present, where Jane is visiting an old automaton held by some separatist Russian church in rural Oregon. The automaton spells out a message when she figures out how to activate it, but it doesn't matter, because Jane has no agency in this plot and is not allowed to investigate anything further. Instead she is immediately set upon by an Evil Robot, after potentially being sold out by her guide. There is a brief mention of Jane's funding being cut off, because her benefactor is also an Evil Robot, and then there is an Interminable Action Scene (LITERAL CHAPTERS) whose apparent aim is making me forget that there is no reason for Jane to be in this book.
Jane is rescued by Peter, a Hot Robot whose POV chapters are largely set in the 1700s, until the latter portion of the book when we need to learn that he was the Avenging Super Soldier from the prologue. It is a shocking revelation and I am sorry to have spoiled it for you. Peter's chapters are about his awakening, his relationship with his sister (a robot with, very practically, a child's body), and the various wars in which he fought. See, each robot has a Word etched into its Relic (an Important Robot Part, which, when reunited with a Robot's body, can bring it back to life) which it must follow, and Peter thinks that his word means that he must take part in human wars. The war chapters are both boring and largely irrelevant to the plot, so I'm pleased to report that there are a LOT of them.
The book's structure - Peter and Jane alternate first person, present tense chapters, Jane's set in the modern day and Peter's in the past - makes it difficult to summarize the plot as it's told in the book, but fortunately almost nothing of relevance happens. Peter was supposed to guard the Relic of Huang Di, his Robot Ruler. In shirking this duty, he pissed off his sister who started a School For Girls. This gets more page time than is really warranted. In the present, Jane is now the owner of this relic, and she and Peter set off on an Adventure so that they can wake Huang Di. They are pursued by Leizu, an Evil Robot, and her Evil Robot goon (it appears that in hundreds of years she has found only one follower). I would hazard a guess that at least 60% of this book is action scenes. The plot, when it finally congeals in the final thirty pages, makes almost no sense and left me confusedly rooting for Leizu, who seems to have been in the right before abruptly losing her mind and deciding to murder everyone for no clear reason. I think that both Huang Di and Leizu end up dead at the end of this book, but if I'm being perfectly honest, I have no idea what actually happened during the final battle.
I will say that Peter's chapters are better than Jane's by miles. I do not think that this is because, as a robot, he is supposed to have a flat effect; I think it's because Jane is a gigantic absence of a person. The book insists that she is passionate about archaeology, but even if that's the case (I'll toss it a bone, here) I cannot fathom why she tags along on Peter's Robot Adventures. Is it because he's hot? I know nothing about Jane's personal life, hopes, dreams, or interests except for that she likes archaeology and she thinks that Peter is hot. There are whiffs of "I'm not like other girls" after her obligatory makeover scene*, but even that isn't strong enough to be offensive. Do I think that the author has never read a single thing written by a woman? I'd bet money on it! Somehow, even that fails to offend.
I read in the Willamette Week that this book "was optioned by 20th Century Fox before it was even written." And you know what? It reads like a script. When I watch an action movie I expect the characters to be tools that move the audience from one action scene to another; I suspend my disbelief about the questionable plot points. I'm not watching to learn something about the human condition, I just want to see shit explode. But that doesn't work for a book, because it turns out that reading about a series of intensifying explosions isn't very interesting. There is a reason that I think books will survive in our increasingly digital age, and that's because books aren't the same kind of storytelling as movies or TV shows or even comics. Even the best movies are still movies. And that's fine! Everything in its place. But the place for this book is very clearly on the big screen, and I wish that publishers would realize that there is a difference.
*I though I could leave this alone, but can we talk about the weird thing where suddenly they're on a personal jet to a private shopping spree and Jane gets a makeover because Peter is secretly rich? Absolutely baffling.