Hinges Book 1: Clockwork City
Meredith McClaren
ISBN: 9781632152534
Hinges Book II: Paper Tigers
Meredith McClaren
ISBN: 9781632155245
Read April 11, 2016
I wish I had known that book two ended on a cliffhanger. I would have stopped with Book One until there was an actual ending. Personal niggles aside, this is an interesting series with good potential for young adult or tween reading programs. Orio is an independently-animated puppet (?) clockwork (?) mechanical person (?) who is suddenly integrated into a small society of similar people in a small isolated city bounded by a great wall. Each person has an assigned mechanical companion in the form of an animal called an "odd" (shades of daemons and Golden Compass) but the reader notices what Orio does not - that her chosen "odd" is in fact an interloper. Before the first slim book is over, this mistake will cost Orio her whole world. The second book takes place in the great wild outside the city, and reminded me greatly (in a good way, I swear) of the very bad, and very short-lived TV show that built on the premise of the movie Logan's Run. (which I feel obligated to inform readers, has nearly nothing to do with the premise of the BOOK Logan's Run, or the many sequelae). The "villains" of the two books remind me of yet another foe: the chalklings of Brandon Sanderson's Rithmatist. In Book Two, Orio and her odd (named Bauble) quickly find a companion - a feckless runaway from yet another city that claimed to be the only civilized place in the world. The two (three?) explore an underground city that seems to have been abandoned or destroyed, and Book Two leaves the reader (viewer?) on a literal cliffhanger. The author/artist's blog estimates that Book Three will be out in February/March 2017.
It's beautiful and wild and atmospheric, and a very slight story. Very mythical and fairy-tale-ish. Lots of questions raised and not directly answered.
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