Clockwork Secrets: Heavy Fire
Dru Pagliassotti
ISBN: 9781770530546
Conclusion to The Clockwork Heart Trilogy (previous reviews of Clockwork Heart & Clockwork Lies: Iron Wind here.)
Read February 23, 2015
I read the first of these way back when, roughly a million years ago, and I was really fascinated with the idea of Exalted and the caste system of Ondinium, and by their nifty anti-gravity steam-and-analytical-engine-driven technologies. I was very much looking forward to spending more time in that culture, seeing how the world worked, and how the restrictions of movement and identity hampered or helped the society.
But then the author decided that instead, we were going to tour the other (sadly not as well-fleshed-out or imaginative) societies of the world, and to largely have her characters ignore the restrictions imposed in the beginning (which, given these characters, was absolutely the right thing to do, and expected of them) while they hare about attempting to be diplomatic for the entire second book, and then almost exactly 4 full pages of this last book.
After that, we're in an extended chase sequence, to yet another country, across oceans and farmlands and mountains, until the finale brings us right back to where we ended the first book, with similarly dramatic results.
I enjoyed the reading. I really love having a married main couple who are happy and working together to manage their (fairly impressive number of) differences of opinions and attitudes, and I love the undertones of cultural strife and racism that streak through like veins of beautiful ores. The story was told engagingly, the characters and pacing were fine - I just really wanted to see Ondinium more first, to be familiar enough with it that it could be accepted as normal, and THEN to see the other countries through their eyes. I just didn't feel that I had enough chance to do that, and so I never quite sympathized with Taya or Chris in their concerns or fears or puzzlements while they were in foreign lands.
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