Book review 'Mainspring' by Jay Lake

Steampunk is a genre which has caught my interest so with my last trip to the library I got hold of a few steampunk novels.  Steampunk is a sub-genre within speculative fiction.  It creates a world, generally based on Victorian times, with machines and automatons powered by steam.  It takes steam-powered machines and takes them to the next level.

 

This curiousity of steampunk as a genre led me to reading Jay Lake’s “Mainspring”.  Lake creates a universe with a clockwork Earth, made of cogs, gears and a mainspring in a hidden location.  The main character Hethor Jacques is a clockmakers apprentice who is visited by the Archangel Gabrielle and given the task of finding the Key Perilous and re-winding the mainspring as it is winding down and the Earth is slowly stopping.  The equator is made up of a vast wall with gears at the top which rotate the Earth.  The idea of a clockwork Earth fascinated me and the literal interpretation of God ‘creating’ the Earth was a great idea for a novelist to explore.  But although the ideas and the potential of a clockwork Earth and a clock-maker God appealed I did not enjoy the book at all.

Lake tried to cram too much fantasy into the book.  Over the equatorial wall there was a world full of ‘winged savages’, giant automatons, furry Neanderthal like people, sorcerers and other monsters.  There was just too much.  The writing style did not sit well with me either as it felt like he was trying too hard to be epic by using phrases that were far too over-descriptive.  Lake also took much from the bible made unoriginal changes like the ‘Brass Christ’ who rewound the world many years ago and taking passages from the bible and just adding a word here and there about gears to make it fit to his world for example the below rewritten prayer

“Our Father, who art in Heaven
“Craftsman be thy name
“Thy Kingdom Done
“Thy plan be done
“On Earth as it is in Heaven
“Forgive us this day our errors
“As we forgive those who err against us
“Lead us not into imperfection
“And deliver us from chaos
“For thine is the power, and the precision
“Forever and ever, amen.”. 

Also I must admit the interspecies sex made me pretty squeamish.  The only time I enjoyed that part was when my friend drunkenly read out the passages while wearing a monkey costume (this actually did happen).

So although the idea and creativity behind this clockwork Earth was great ‘Mainspring’ did not live up to its potential.  Two out of five stars from me.  Please let me know if you disagree with this I would love to know what people liked about this book.