Book Review Catch-Up! "Mainspring" by Jay Lake

[megwrites]

Title: Mainspring
Author: Jay Lake (JLake.com; jaylake)
Genre: Science Fiction
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Tor



Basic Plotline: In a world where the universe runs, literally, like clockwork, sixteen-year-old Hethor, a clockmaker's apprentice, is charged by the angel Gabriel with a task of finding the Key Perilous and using it to wind the mainspring of the world before the Earth comes to a stop.


The Positives: This is a very visual novel and a very action packed one. If you're a steampunk fan, it's something you're going to get a lot out of. One wishes that Lake had a camera with which to capture what must have been the stunning sights in his own mind as he imagined the world he lays out in Mainspring.

It's pure steam/clock-punk the whole way through and stays very loyal to it's subgenre.

There's something of a coming-of-age tale in this adventure story and it makes me wonder why the novel isn't YA. While there is a somewhat graphic sex scene that could easily be edited or removed without detriment to the novel - this is very much something that I could imagine putting into the hands of younger SF/F fans who would very much enjoy the vivid portrait of a clockwork world.



The Negatives: I wanted so very badly to like this book. I've read other works by Lake and enjoyed them very much.

Unfortunately there were a lot things in this novel that really didn't work for me. Some were not the fault of the author.

Firstly, I've come to learn that most clock/steam/something-punk leaves me underwhelmed. I gave up on Mieville after falling asleep three times trying to get through Iron Council, just to give you an idea. As a verbal/auditory reader, I have a hard time processing and making sense of intensely visual descriptions. Thus there were many times in the novel where I had to gloss over or handwave past descriptions that my mind just couldn't put together.

For example, there's a scene where Hethor and the treacherous William of Ghent are descending down some kind of slope and using shoes that have some sort of weird slant to their soles and I spent nearly a half-hour trying to visualize what that looked like before giving up. I literally could not get the spatial reasoning in my head to create a workable image for me.

Furthermore, Lake plays on a literary trope of an unassuming, humble young man being thrust out into the world on an important mission, discovering the world and himself in the process. It reminds me a lot of Captains Courageous in a way, and that's a story I didn't enjoy. Too much Boy's Own Adventure plus a does of nautical and aeronautical gosh-wow for me. The technical details of sailing and flying completely bore me.

Furthermore, the airship terms are never explained or defined, so that there are several strange phrases which don't make sense and left me puzzled.

As for character and plot, they didn't work well for me, either. I didn't find the characters terribly plausible, I'm afraid. Hethor seemed far too innocent, wide-eyed, trusting, and lucky for me. I also didn't buy that I was supposed to think of him as humble when he was a clockmaker's apprentice. The historian in me kept saying, "Well, yeah, but what about all the kids in that era who would be working on farms or in coal mines or factories, breathing in poison on a daily basis?"

There was entirely too much deus-ex-machina in this book for me. Hethor is helped again and again by the White Toucan or the white bird and no plausible explanation is given of why he is again and again saved. The "winged savages" that kill everyone and everything else they get their hands on bail him out again and again without explanation.

Prayers and meditations on the clockwork nature of God suffice when Hethor has no rational or logical plan to get himself out of implausible and impossible situations, again - this is not explained. For instance, he gains the power to speak to a group of ape-like natives in the jungles of the "Southern Earth" after being unable understand them for several days.

The other characters, either the human ones or the Correct People characters just didn't register to me as I was too busy trying to make sense of what was going on. I kept expecting to find that Hethor's dazzling luck and prayer had a more practical - perhaps even sinister - explanation behind them.

When he is helped by a librarian who does not know him but decides to take up his cause and believe his story about seeing an angel, with no reason she should, I expected fully that this would later be explained. It wasn't.

The premise of the book failed for me, ultimately, because Lake expects a level of faith and trust from readers that he does not justify. While there is some interesting theology to be found in certain place, it is neither explored nor explained well enough to support a book that badly needed to make sense but didn't.


CoC Score: 3. While there are no significant CoC characters as we would recognize them, save one sailor on the ship who dies. However, there are a lot of disturbing problems with a heroic white male being saved, worshipped, and followed by a civilization of "ape like people" who live in a jungle who are simple, philosophic, utopian, and idealistic. While these people are not technically human, I felt very uncomfortable reading as they followed Hethor, a sixteen-year-old American white boy around just because he had a golden tablet, thinking of him as a savior or demi-god. There were too many reminders of other stories, written both in the past and the present, where the ape like people were not another species but the very skewed portrayal of real peoples who were having their homelands invaded by European forces.

Gender Score: 4. Not a lot of female characters, human or otherwise, in this story. The librarian helps Hethor and then is never heard from again. A girl dressed as a boy gives him a ride to Boston and then disappears. The female Correct Person he falls in love with follows him to her death and then is resurrected by him. No other female Correct People are even heard of.

GLBT Score 4. There are mentions of the males of the Correct People having sex with each other during the expedition, but it's only a passing mention which Hethor is immediately disdainful of. Otherwise, no significant GLBT characters, situations, or issues in the book.