Escapement

When I finished this novel's prequel, Mainspring, I wasn't so impressed with the storytelling of the novel but with its setting, something of a steampunk nirvana—an Earth with gears running about its equator guiding it on its track through the heavens. Just that idea and its effects playing out are fascinating, but only somewhat shallowly dealt with in the first novel, and so I looked forward to the second, willing to wade through clumsy characterization and dialogue to get more of an idea of this world. And then, as I read Escapement, it turns out that the characterization and dialog take a huge leap forward, making the novel enjoyable for those aspects as well as the setting that drew me in.

Instead of relying on a single protagonist, as is the case with Mainspring, Escapement interweaves the stories of three protagonists, each offering differing perspectives on the world around them. Paolina Barthes has grown up on the Wall, the massive mountain range that circles the globe at the equator in support of the gear threads. Because her community is primarily made up of shipwrecked sailors, her life has generally been miserable since they do not hold women in very high esteem. It's no help that she is gifted with incredible engineering insight, allowing her to build and repair tools that are a necessity for the life of her fellow villagers; rather than appreciating her skill, her community takes her for granted and expects her to work for their benefit without her rising the status of a worthless girl-child. So when a young English boy arrives in her village bearing a pocket-watch, her imagination is set ablaze with the power and potential of taking the clockwork that guides her world and miniaturizing it into a tool that can be held in her hand. And that work makes her want to travel to civilized lands, where such tools are commonplace.

Threadgill Angus Al-Wazir is the chief petty officer for a dirigible that crashed at the Wall and has just made his way back to England on a boat he built on his own. He finds himself summoned to the Prime Minister's office and is there recommissioned and ordered to return to the Wall to aid in efforts to build a tunnel through it to see what is in the Southern Hemisphere before the Chinese can begin colonizing there themselves. Stoic on the outside, he accepts his orders and heads back to the part of the world where he has suffered the most, serving Queen and empire.

Emily McHenry Childress is a librarian at Yale, an "old maid" whose life has been devoted to the books she cares for and the occasional efforts on behalf of a secret organization called the White Birds, whose goal is to maintain balance through the world's powers by use of knowledge and books. One afternoon, she is summoned to go on a journey for the White Birds, and so she gives up her safe life, the only one she has ever known, to travel to England and beyond.

Over the course of Escapement, these characters become well-rounded—especially Al-Wazir and Childress—as they travel about the world in order to meet what are, ultimately, self-imposed goals for serving the people they hold most dear. The structure of the novel is rigorously mechanical: each chapter is divided into three sections, one each devoted to the adventures of the three protagonists, and while that can sometimes feel restrictive, author Jay Lake does some interesting things with the plot so that often, within a chapter, the events in each character's life parallel the others. This could become somewhat heavy-handed when used by a less-skilled author, but Lake handles it delicately, so that it wasn't until halfway through that I noticed the pattern. And those adventures are a lot of fun, showing us more of the civilizations that inhabit the Wall, Europe, and even into China.

Even though the book is deeply ensconced in the steampunk tradition, through the character of Paolina, Lake is able to introduce fantasy elements that, again, could be jarring but end up working smoothly. For it turns out that Paolina is the most common of the archetypes of epic fantasy—the gifted outsider who strives to take her place within a more enlightened society. Like the peasant boy who discovers he has been touched by the gods and is destined to be king, Paolina finds that her immense engineering talent goes beyond the mundane into something of the mystical: the watch she makes with the English pocket watch as its model is so much more: instead of just recording the time and timing of the things around her, she can use it to effect those things as well. For instance, she is able to change the timing of the engines of a dirigible that follows her so that it turns the craft away from its pursuit and eventually destroys it. But being from the most backwater-y of villages, she suspects that all the civilized countries have wizards and tools with these abilities and so is determined to get more training by visiting these wizards. And when word of someone with these decidedly singular powers gets out, she becomes the object of worldwide hunt.

Unlike Childress and Al-Wazir, Paolina grows very little over the course of her adventures. Repeatedly placing her fate in the hands of someone she thinks she can trust turns out to be disastrous since those same people continuously break that trust. Nonetheless, this does not weigh down the plot since she is constantly on the run and not really given any time to be contemplative and nurtured, especially as she continues to discover the awesome reach and destructive ability of her power.

For whatever reason, this turned out to be a book I didn't want to put down. I was fascinated by the people and the world they inhabit and did not feel that the author threw any unwarranted curves. There are passages that might feel like they get away from what drives the story, but at the same time, when people live their lives, not everything in their life drives them to a single plot resolution. This picaresque nature is reflected in the narrative of Childress and Al-Wazir's travels and doesn't distract from the final chapters as everything begins to pay off. I look forward to the final book in the trilogy to continue the stories of these characters' lives and how they deal with the revelations that proceed from the conclusion of the book.

Mainspring

I received a copy of The Best of Philip Jose Farmer for my birthday last week and have enjoyed picking and choosing some of the short stories from the book. So it should be no surprise that Farmer is on my mind of late, especially as I finish reading Jay Lake's apparently ground-breaking novel. And not to take away from its originality, the comparisons to Farmer are increasingly easy to come by.

Lake has envisioned an Earth that is run by clockwork: sky-watchers looking up into the night sky can see the track that the Earth runs around on stretching off beyond the horizons. The equator of the Earth is a giant mountain range, on the top of which is brass gearwork, the teeth that allow the Earth to ride in the solar system track. The history of this Earth is somewhat different too, but not apparently because of the major change in physics. The United States feels much the same but is a colony of England under the rule of Queen Victoria. And England has dominated Europe and the New World so that its nemesis is China, which has expanded across Asia. The two world powers use stereotypical steampunk technology, the air filled with dirigibles and steamships. We are introduced to young Hethor, an apprentice clockmaker, at the pivotal moment of his life: he is visited by the archangel Gabriel, who tells him that the mainspring of the Earth is winding down and that Hethor is the one who must wind the Earth back up.

What a delirious and exciting paradox—the Earth is more obviously mechanical than the one we live on, and yet angels appear to its citizens. And as the reader works his way through the novel, he finds that magic works too, as a special affinity for the mechanical underpinnings of the world. So in some ways Mainspring sets up as the classic fantasy quest novel: our young hero, not knowing the power he has, sets off on a near-impossible task as he grows into his potential. And yet I often see the book described as steampunk, or a new subgenre called "clockpunk." It has elements of that as well, a thrilling alternate history of the turn of the 20^th century that acts as a backdrop for Hethor's quest.

And so I am reminded of Farmer: creating a strangely different world (like The World of Tiers series or Dayworld or Riverworld) and then exploring it with a character who is a part of it and appears to know something of it but learns very much more through their adventures. And like those Farmer books, the world itself is probably the most important character, leaving the protagonist of the novel somewhat flat and never really fully developed, while the wonders of this world are given detail…enough to lead to more questions. And like some of the more classic Farmer, there is discussion of spirituality and relationships: Hethor finds that everything is different on the southern side of the equator, leading to his questioning everything he knows is "right."

The world that Lake imagines truly is ground-breaking, though, opening all sorts of potential for story-telling. And using the manner in which Farmer studies his strange worlds, whether intentionally or not, is a good pattern to follow. While the story eventually plays out much as one might expect, it is exciting nonetheless, its philosophical passages fascinating asides to the action sequences. And the potential is huge. I look forward to finding the sequel and seeing the ongoing adventures of the clockwork Earth.