Tracy's Reviews > Mainspring

I have just finished rereading this book for the first time. On second exposure it is even better than I had remembered. It is both subtle and outrageous. It is a marvelous chance to step out of our own familiar world filled with marvels, into a world strange and steeped in the elements of our own, but rendered in strange hues, as if seen through the distorted lens of a funhouse mirror.
It is more than Hethor's story, it is the story of the Brass Christ, and the mysterious sorcerer (or not) William of Ghent. It is the story of what happens when the mechanical meets the divine, and the boy who becomes a man on his way to wind the Mainspring of a clockwork world. It is the book that introduced me directly to the Steampunk Revolution that has been brewing for a decade in fantasy and sciece fiction.