Julie's Reviews > Mainspring

Jay Lake wrote one of my favourite short stories in the Steampunk anthology, so I was really expecting better from this book -- but unfortunately, it really didn't do it for me. Hethor is your standard intrepid boy hero with hardly any characterisation, there's no smooth character development, his love interest is preternaturally supportive and understanding and flawless, the ending left me unfulfilled, the writing felt stilted and overly-formal at times, and I had a really hard time just grasping some of Lake's description and exactly how his world fits together. And in a world based entirely on clockwork and precision gears, that's pretty awfully important.