Sean's Reviews > The Half-Made World

Two men race one another, each trying to be the first to capture an old crazed man. The masters of these men believe there may be a secret in the mad man's shattered mind.

Setting:
The world is quite literally half-made. People are slowly pushing west, claiming more land, guided mostly by The Line. The Line is a mass organization of men, and I do mean men as in males not humans, working for The Engines. These engines are some manner of gigantic train-like things, that were created by The Line but have, by some means, gained sentience. A rather literal instance of deus ex machina, or god from the machine, in the common tongue. They demand further expansion, thus The Line pushes further and further west.

As The Line pushes west, they are endlessly harried by the agents of The Gun. The Gun is a collective of demons loosely bound to firearms which house them in our world, hence the name. Each demon latches on to an agent, who they get to do their bidding, either willingly or by threat of some punishment called the goad. The agents of The Gun are given power by their otherworldly commanders; granted strength, speed, healing, and just in general becoming a slightly more awesome version of Rambo.

Between these warring factions, there are two more groups; the unaffiliated people who mostly want to just live their lives without being caught in the crossfire, sometimes quite literally, and The Folk. These individuals are human-esq but not exactly human. They look plenty human, if desperately in needed of a shave and some clothes to cover their always naked bodies, but they speak no known language and, more non-humanly, death doesn't seem to stick; they just get back up after a while, not any worse for the wear.

Folk come from the unmade lands West of civilization. However, do not assume “unmade” merely means these lands lack towns, roads, or railways. They do lack those things, but it's the other things they lack that are far more important. The unmade lands lack reason and order; things happen which can't, but they do anyway because the lands have not been made to heel to man's logic. Things we think of as laws of reality don't apply here. Time doesn't pass the same. The life that exists there doesn't follow any sensible evolution (or creation if you prefer).

Characters:
Liv: Liv is a psychiatrist or therapist or something roughly akin to such professions. She is also one of her own patients, having something, which in my admittedly minimal knowledge of such things, I would say it's a bit like PTSD, brought on by the violent death of her mother when she was young. At the start of the novel Liv is heading out west to House Dolores, a hospital / mental asylum, in hopes of using her knowledge to the aid of the unfortunate there, and hopefully also being able to study cases of the various forms of mental illness. One of her patients is, of course, the mad man that everyone is after.

Creedmoor: In his own words John Creedmoor describes himself as “half-heartedly a monster.” This is a rather appt discretion of the individual. For many years now the man has been an agent of The Gun, traveling, at times unwillingly, with his demon master Marmion. Creedmoor seems to enjoy violence in some manner. If I were to guess at it, I think he likes it mostly because it’s easy. When you’re in a gunfight, you shoot the other man or you die, no difficult choices need to be made, and you don’t have time for pesky things like morality to burden you down. In the moments between the gunfights, Creedmoor wonders if he really wants to be serving his demonic master. He questions the things he has done and the things he’s currently doing.

Lowry: Lowry is a man of The Line and is best described as adequate. All men of the line are adequate. None of them are exceptional because with exceptionality come pride and pride is not valued among men of The Line, quite the opposite in fact. Any Linesman considered to be too prideful, is punished for his arrogance. Even this point aside, Lowry is still best described as adequate. He’s a very average man without any significant particularities. If he does hold one trait worthy of mention, it would be his loyalty. Perhaps it stems from respect and reverence for his metal gods, or perhaps fear, but he is dead set on doing as they command and nothing will stop him.

Plot:
The third person view bounces back and forth between our three protagonists mentioned above. Liv, along with her somewhat mentally impaired friend, is heading out to the House Dolores to help people and to study ailments of the mind. She wants no part of what she's going to be caught up in. At almost the same moment, both The Gun and The Line receive information that an old crazed man at that very house is actually an old general from a now fallen former faction and may know the location of an old and powerful weapon. The weapon may just be strong enough to finally end the centuries long fight between the two factions. Both Creedmoor and Lowry are dispatched, each tasked with retrieving the insane old man so that his broken mind might be searched for whatever it could still hold. Both are well aware of their adversary and both of them, of course, are determined to get there and secure the general first.

My Thoughts:
On the whole I thought the book was quite solid.

One of my favorite things throughout the novel was watching the growth and revealing of Creedmoor’s character. As I said earlier Creedmoor is, in some part, a villain. However, he is also very much not a villain. He is often conflicted about what his demonic master demands he do, but he has little choice of his own. It was fun watching him and his master argue back and forth, particularly when he noticed he was needed and the threats of his master were all but moot.

Without a doubt the other strongest aspect of the novel is the world. Gilman has done, mostly, a very good job setting up the world. It's a strange mix of Western, steampunk, and a little fantasy, but he manages to make it all work together and none of it feels out of place. My only complaint with the world building is that there wasn't a bit more of it. There were a few things I was very curious about that were either not addressed, or were only barely addressed.

The biggest among these things is why The Gun and The Line are even fighting to begin with. There is about one line in the text in which it says The Gun was woken up by the westward pushing of The Line and based off that I guessed that The Gun presumably liked things better before The Line showed up. Thus they hate The Line and fight them; similar to how a bear might respond if you were to give it a swift kick after finding it hibernating. Aside from this guess though, there seems no apparent reason for the war, furthermore because The Gun is losing, rather badly in fact. They have been all along and they know it. They simply cannot contend with the sheer size of the legion that continues pushing west, making the whole thing seem like a futile war The Gun wages exclusively due to spite.

What is also somewhat poorly justified is the existence of the engines. Again some single line of text covers this, saying only that humans built something of such grand scale that it miraculously spawned its own consciousness and desire for continued expansion. Even allowing for this somewhat absurd reasoning, this still doesn't make sense. If my toaster suddenly began telling me to light things on fire, I wouldn't do it and I sure as heck would not continue building more toasters. Yet The Line follow the engines’ orders like a cult, doing, without question or hesitation, as they are commanded by their metal gods.

I would have liked it if there had been further explanation of the structure of The Line as well, particularly where all of the women are. Only once in the entire book (maybe twice, in not sure on the second) is a single woman mentioned to be, in any capacity, working for The Line. Even if women aren’t working for The Line, the sheer size of the force would mean that surely they have to be somewhere. The men of The Line are apparently normal humans, made in the way normal humans are made. Lowry mentions having a mother at one point and seems to understand the concept of mating plenty well enough. Yet, the number of women which must exist, on a biological level if for no other reason, to allow this number of men to exist, don’t actually seem to be anywhere. I honestly would have found the whole thing to make more sense if the engines were simply spawning the men through some mad crossing science and mysticality. It would both explain the total lack of any females to support the absurd number of men that exist, and would explain their utter devotion; it is bred into them, they are more thralls than men. But this is not the case. They are apparently normal men whose mothers exist... somewhere we never see I suppose and who are simply trained in obedience from a young age.

Another thing which does not make sense is why Lowry, and pretty much only Lowry, is chosen for the task of tracking down the general. Lowry is, more or less, a nobody, just another man of The Line demonstrating few, if any, particularly useful traits. He's not high ranking, he's not a good leader, and he's a bit of a coward. Given all of this, it seems odd that The Line would choose him as their one hope and give him only a relatively paltry sum of resources for this highly critical mission. I suppose this was perhaps necessary for anything even resembling a fair fight, but it does seem a bit odd when you take a step back.

I have some mixed feelings about the end of the book. I'm not sure I really cared for the ending but I'm also not sure how else it could have ended that I'd have liked more. Around the middle of the novel, one of the characters makes a decision which heavily impacts how things can progress from that point on. As a result of this choice, we get to see some pretty cool things that wouldn't have been able to happen otherwise, but the ending is also somewhat constrained in its options. The ending wasn't bad, just not really all that satisfying to me.

All in all, I enjoyed the novel quite a bit and despite my squabbling I would recommend it if a mix of Western, fantasy, and steampunk sounds up your alley.