Customer Reviews

Devices and Desires (Engineer Trilogy)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The first volume of The Engineer Trilogy was the first K. J. Parker novel I ever read. I'm aware that the author is quite popular in the UK, and Orbit are undoubtedly hoping that the same phenomenon will occur on this side of the Atlantic.

The premise is interesting enough: An engineer is sentenced to death for a petty transgression of Guild law. After murdering some of his captors to save his life, leaving his wife and daughter behind he is forced into exile.

The industrial setting is a refreshing change from the typical medieval environment which is endemic to the fantasy genre. Incidentally, I do feel that Parker at times went a bit over the top with her descriptions of the various devices and machines. I'm not an M. I. T. student, so she lost me on a few occasions.

Devices and Desires is an intelligent read filled with intrigue. Throughout the novel it is evident that the story shows a lot of potential. However, the author doesn't always deliver.

The book is well-written. Indeed, K. J. Parker's flowing prose is a delight to read. And she imbues the entire narrative with that witty British humor which is so lacking in North American works. The pace of this novel is extremely uneven. The narrative can be fluid and efficient, yet at times the rhythm becomes particularly sluggish.

The characterization is the aspect which leaves the most to be desired. While one can't wait to discover how Ziani Vaatzes' elaborate plan to wreak vengeance on Mezentia will play out, I found that I didn't much care for the rest of that cast of characters. Especially Duke Orsea and Veatriz, both of whom are rather on the lame side.

Some of the plotlines are difficult to get into, for they appear to bring little or nothing to the overall story arc. K. J. Parker nevertheless plays out her hand rather well, leaving the door open for a lot of things to come. One thing that very nearly killed this one for me, though, was how Vaatzes orchestrates everything which comes to a head at the end of the book. It was all a bit too easy, if you ask me.

Still, I'm curious to read Evil for Evil and The Escapement. Though it suffers from a number of shortcomings, Devices and Desires was compelling enough to intrigue me in a way that makes me want to discover what happens next. . .

If you're looking for something different, Devices and Desires just might be what you need.

This was the first book by K.J.Parker that I've had the pleasure to read, and will certainly not be the last. I am new to the fantasy genre, though not quite a virgin (I'm well read in the Sci-Fi genre, if that counts for something). That said, "Devices And Desires" was clearly the best that I've read so far in the fantasy genre. Parker has clearly done her research with the sort of dilligence and attention to detail that rivals anything that could be expected of the central character of the book.

The story centers around Ziani Vaazes, the unlikely unconventional protagonist-victim-anti-hero. He's a single minded genius of an engineer, who, after some unfortunate events, is forced to work with the material flesh and bone, of human motivations, alliances and betrayals, to construct his grand and terrible machine, that is the only means to achieve a purpose ludicrously simple and mundane. A purpose he cannot avoid working towards, as he puts it, any more than a rock pushed of a ledge can help falling.

Devices And Desires is full of interesting personalities, depth in all fronts, intrigue of human relations with the often banal, almost trivial reasons that can lead to the slaughter of armies and the death of nations. And detail. Lots of detailed knowledge, yet never tedious.

Also a well balanced end, tying up many lose ends, giving a feeling of an end of an epoch; yet hinting at things to come, and whole new battles to fight, as Vaatzes' machine grinds it's gears.

As a SciFi fan with a naturalistic world view, I also appreciated the fact that the world is not infused with magic, ghosts and goblins, but rather is confined to the much more interesting wonders of the natural world. The only thing about the world of the book where I had to suspend my disbelief was the complete lack of religions (unless you count the mezentine's religious attitude towards precision of engineering, and the organization around it as religion). While being irreligious myself, I do believe that evidence shows that societies lacking religions or at least prominent superstitions completely (in reality, rather than just on paper) are as unlikely as any of the most fantastic absurdities fathomed by fantasy writers. This strange ommision can, howerver, be forgiven, as world created by Parker is so rich and satisfying in numerous other respects. Devices And Desires is an impressive piece of work, and a real page turner.

While anchiously waiting for the sequel, I'll certainly look into Parker's other works.

Like I said, I wasn't really sure what to expect from this book. I picked it up on a whim. Nor am I sure whether the title was some kind of sideways homage to P.D. James. Little mysteries.

Devices and Desires is a really clever alt-fantasy kind of book that avoids pretty much every typical pitfall of swords & sorcery genre. Ziani Vaazes is a fascinating anti-hero-- a kind of sociopath engineer who believes that his actions are an inevitable result of the situation in which he is placed. He may be even be right, given the assumptions behind Parker's world-building. It's a relief to have the much more likable Valens as counterpoint, even with his flaws.

There's no magic, just alternative science. You spend your time as a reader focusing on the idea of engineering and technology development rather than on rules for shooting fireballs. A welcome change of pace. There are well written discussion of fantasy, management and cultural differences.

If I could have wished for anything, I might have wished that the book was a trifle warmer. It is a cold cold place in The Engineer Trilogy. I guess that this is part of the point, but I will confess to liking my fantasy flavored with at least a hint of sentimentality.

Although I think that I'll buy the next in the series (Evil for Evil) first, it is worth mentioning that Parker has two other series under her belt-- The Fencer Trilogy and the Scavenger Trilogy. I'm sorry that it took me so long to be aware of her work.

I twice contemplated leaving this book unfinished but the story pulled me through. A few things about her style bother me:

1) The use of contemporary slang and vernacular was distracting. You don't have to get all "let us hasten" to write fantasy but it wasn't realistic that high born nobles schooled from birth to rule would talk like high school students.

2) She's very undisciplined about point of view. She wrote omnisciently, giving us complete access to a character's thoughts and perceptions, but would then withhold critical information that the characters clearly knew. There was no justification for this other than a ham handed attempt to create tension.

3) Yes, I get it: K.J. Parker knows an awful lot about fencing, armor, and siege engines. Stop showing off and get on with the story.

Still, I will probably read the second one because I am curious to where she goes and I do like the character Valens and the depiction of Mezantine society is very interesting. The character of Ziani Vaatzes is disappointingly thin. She clearly stated his motivation but I never felt it.

I thought this book was a pretty good opener for The Engineer Trilogy. Like others have mentioned, I wouldnt call this a traditional fantasy, as there is some industrial-age technology, but not magic or other "typical" fantasy elements. The biggest determining factor on whether you would enjoy this book or not is how much you like the author's writing style. Its a bit different than most. There are a lot of parenthetical asides (like this) and technical details. I found the writing to add depth to the characters and the story, but i can see how others would think the novel too wordy, with too many extraneous passages that arent needed. It worked for me, and I plan to read book two.

I knew from the first chapter that this book was going to be a good read. The writing is superb and Parker's attention to detail is impressive without being sentimental. The cultures are all expertly crafted -- the Mezentines with their obsessive perfection and their technological monopoly are about as far from a traditional fantasy civilization as you can get and the way that Parker portrays the Vadani and Eremains makes them stand out as well.

The characters all have their own very intriguing conflicts and dilemmas. Valens, for example, spends most of his energy writing to a girl who he met once even though he knows such action is detrimental to his country and his person. Zianni agrees with the morals that his country is built upon, violates them anyway and then proceeds to go through a dizzying array of betrayals and machinations just so he can be with his family. How each character handles the moral dilemmas they are presented with is a fascinating thing to behold.

The only thing that keeps me from giving this book five stars (and it was a difficult decision) is that I think that some of the characterizations are a bit muddled. Zianni Vaatzes is the supreme example. Throughout the book, you read constantly that he is doing all of this so that he can be with his wife and daughter and given his brilliance one can only assume that his actions will help him achieve just that even if it does not immediately seem that way, but for all of this we are not given even one scrap of memory of his family. We are constantly told what his motivations are, but never, ever shown. This highlights a larger problem with the characters, even though we are given more personal background on many of them -- they lack passion. The characters rarely have a passionate reaction to anything and if they do, they do it in a very rational way. If they were not so different from traditional fantasy characters, then I have a feeling that they would come off as one dimensional -- all cool calculation and reasonable thought, no passion or impulsiveness.

My only other complaint is that some of the technical jargon is a bit much at time. We get it; the author has studied the technicalities of metalworking. This does not mean that it is entertaining to read about in a fantasy novel.

This book's greatest strength is that it differs from typical fantasy a good deal and this strength helps mask some of its flaws. All in all, a great beginning to what looks to be an incredible series.

Fortunately for Ms. Parker, this book is well researched in the minutia, solidly, if mediocrely, written, and has several sympathetic characters. This, on top of its unique premise, gives it TWO stars. It fails as a novel, however, when one looks too closely at the world building, which has several glaring inconsistencies; when one sees that the main character isn't very sympathetic; and when one sees that the overall themes run contrary to real life experience. Sadly, the series goes rapidly downhill from this book.

The book is excellently researched in each individual topic--from mechanical devices to boar hunting. This is definitely a step in the right direction for all fantasy writers--understanding the systems of everyday life gives the author an ability to immerse us in the lives of the characters. Sadly, Ms. Parker is blissfully unaware of this opportunity, and it passes her by.

A shame, too, since she has no small skill with a pen. Several scenes of objects changing hands, infiltration, grand political arrangements, and so forth lend themselves easily to her descriptions, and she has a few pieces of wit that are absolutely brilliant. These are not as prevalent as they should be, however, so readers should expect to slog through chapters of solid, but boring prose.

The characters Ms. Parker gives at the beginning of the book--the dukes, Meil Ducas, Veatriz, and to some extent Jarnac--are practically immediately sympathetic. She doesn't capitalize on these gains, though, instead dumping us with a rather dull protagonist who seems to be dully planning to destroy most of the world or somesuch, and decides to agonize over the killing just enough to be an annoyance without any character development at all.

At this point, she would still get a solid four stars out of five, out of faith--this is the first book in a trilogy, after all.

It's disappointing, however, once you get further into the book and start seeing all the small inconsistencies that strain this world to the breaking point. The Mezentines build everything out of steel or brass, produce only the finest goods, sell them at a price affordable enough for a farmer, and somehow turn a profit? There are nomads that somehow find enough grain and working mills scattered about to make bread a staple of their diet? These, and hundreds more inconsistencies will jump out at anyone with a general knowledge of tactics, economies, societies, and politics. It's as if Ms. Parker was willfully ignorant of the macroscopic view of the world.

I've already talked about how dull this book's protagonist is, but I'll remind you of it for a moment, for symmetry.

Ms. Parker's final transgression is one that won't jump out at most readers--her themes are based mostly around love somehow being a binding thing. That is, once you fall in love, you will never, ever be able to move on. Moreover, this seems to culminate mostly in trying to kill people, or contemplating killing people, or something along those lines. It makes me wonder how we survive dating. Or divorces.

Some will say that the plotting is what redeems the book, but I found it on par with a sitcom in that regard--nothing spectacular. You understand what the protagonist is doing all along, wondering how he's doing it. That reveal turns out to be mostly disappointing, which is not a good way to start the series.

Overall, if this book were stand-alone, I'd give it only two stars. Since there are hooks for the sequels to turn this into a dramatically better story, though, I'll give it three, and hope for the best.

EDIT: After reading the second book in the series, I'd taken away one star, since the series becomes significantly worse.

Devices and Desires by KJ Parker seemed interesting when it started out. There was a nice juxtaposition of societies between the hyper industrialized, very rigid Mezentia and the agarian Dukedoms that border it. The initial "battle" between the Mezentians and the Eremians does allow the reader to get a good picture of Miel Ducas and Duke Orsea. Ziani's escape from Mezentia also allows one something to latch onto character-wise (as Mezentia frowns very heavily on innovation and even more so on portable innovation).

There is a lot of great set up for something really awesome... but it gets horridly bogged down by a lack of focus on character drama or nations or anything else really. Instead there's quite a bit about details that did not seem to have any major bearing on the story at hand, like King Fashion (which would be OK as a side note, but not as a focus) or Ziani's engineering specifications (which were ok to illustrate his perfectionism, but one gets really tired of hearing about his machine specifications when one could think about his wife and plans for revenge or whatever). The characters simply stagnated over the course of reading and the societal juxtaposition wasn't illustrated enough for that to hold my attention either. The best comparison I can think of to describe how this book felt to me was the David Lynch rendition of Dune. It was so over focused on detail that actual plot gets lost.

I have to say that I could not get all the way through the book and will concede the possibility that something might happen to tie everything up and start it moving at a quicker pace during the last hundred pages or so, but I kept finding other more interesting things to do instead (like schoolwork). In any case, I haven't felt the slightest need to pick up this book again. If I want a dry read, my textbooks will be there.

It seems that this is a book that many people have a hard time determining their feelings about - some love it, some despise it and many are ambivalent.

I really liked this book in that it kept me guessing as to everyone's motives - I still am not entirely sure the motivations of the main character, Vaatzes. Alternately I liked him, pitied him and hated him.

The rest of the characters evoked similar feelings - though often they were stupid, detached, weak...utterly flabber...more It seems that this is a book that many people have a hard time determining their feelings about - some love it, some despise it and many are ambivalent.

I really liked this book in that it kept me guessing as to everyone's motives - I still am not entirely sure the motivations of the main character, Vaatzes. Alternately I liked him, pitied him and hated him.

The rest of the characters evoked similar feelings - though often they were stupid, detached, weak...utterly flabbergasted by the main character's actions as I was.

I was entertained by the wry wit of the author and the repeated references to rules of Fashion, Tolerance and statistical tables of war. The author illustrates his world's cultures solidly.

The discussions of metalworking and engineering were quite interesting, but sometimes a bit drawn out. Similarly, the portrayal of the hunt - however, having never been on a formal hunt, yet having read about many in various books, this is the first time that I felt an author fully understood what it entails and gave me a complete picture of it as well. So, while it derailed the narrative a bit, I still enjoyed it.

Unfortunately, the "evil villain" of the book falls into the trap of all cliche evil villains and explains his master plan to a captive in one of the last few chapters of the book...not quite all of it, but I'd rather have had the "Aha! He did it!" moment revealed another way than in a smug monologue.

I also would have appreciated a few more female characters, or at least more "screen time" and development for those that exist.

I will definitely go on to read the rest of the series, despite the weaknesses of the book.

It's always a toss-up when trying to decide whether or not to start a 650 page book. Or at least the hard part is when you get to page 350 and realize that you're not sure whether you want to finish or not, but then are struck in the face with the idea that you've already read more than half, so what the heck...just finish the thing.

Devices and Desires is one of those books that has all the right ideas, all the things you are looking for in a fictional book. Character development, an awesome synopsis and plotline, great use of language and beautiful descriptions. The problem is that it's all over the top. It's all stretch out and dragged across 650 pages when it could have been very well done over about 400-450.

At least 1/4 of the entire thing is fluff. Insignificant fluff. Descriptions about mechanisms and the way they work can be interesting, and the way the mind of the engineer works is intriguing, true. I enjoyed first getting to know the man and see the scheming, calculating things that go through there...but come on, when you get to the end of the book and he's still talking about how `true' this or that is and complains about `tolerance' of something he built from scratch to compare it to the `tolerance' of the same thing in his homeland, quoting several paragraphs from a handbook for us to read and not understand. The concept is good, but a lot of it sounds like its straight out of a mechanical engineering textbook and I can barely understand a word out of those things. This doesn't allow you to relax while you read, it makes you feel like you're analyzing a essay.

Also, the characters are deep, but I don't really feel sympathy or attachment to any of them...they're all a little immature for me, all in their own way. You've got the friend who tries to be the nice guy but always ends up saying things that could completely compromise the entire government he helps rule, but nobody except for me, the reader, seems to catch those slips. You've got the naive duke at his side, opposed by the duke who is always on top of everything in the neighboring country, and they are all three fighting for the same girl who acts like she's a fourteen year old high school-er.

I don't know about this one. Obviously, I'm not portraying this book in a good light even though there are some really good things about it. K. J. Parker is a very talented writer and I could only wish to have some of her skill in sentence structure and word usage. But the truth is that there are just not enough things going on for the amount of words that she put behind them.

Devices and Desire was a decent novel, but it wasn't good enough for me to pick up the next volume, Evil for Evil, since I could barely stand to finish this one in the first place.

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