Graphic Novels: Hinges (Books 1&2). Meredith McClaren

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.

2015 Review Round-Up: Historical Fantasy/Steampunk: The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, Natasha Pulley

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street
Natasha Pulley
ISBN: 9781620408339
Sumptuous cover hints at a rich and clockwork-detailed plot, filled with multifaceted characters.
Read November 2015

The most interesting thing about this book is how Pulley manages to keep you from deciding which characters are good guys and which characters are bad guys for the ENTIRE BOOK.  It's nothing short of a magic trick all of itself, and it makes the perfect cherry on top of this confection of a story.  It's rich and mellow and tooth-achingly dense, and just jammed full of atmosphere like plummy preserves inside an overstuffed tart.  From the very first paragraphs, you realise that you're in for something enjoyable, but it's the absolute opposite of a light quick read - it's dense and full of philosophy and humanity and the big important questions of free will and fate and predestination.  Yet even so it doesn't feel like a slog - it all just seems naturally flowing from the premise, which I'm not even going to hint at here, because it's so amazingly absurd and complicatedly simple.  If you like peculiar characters studies, and atmospheric steampunky London, you'll be right at home here.