Customer Reviews

Gears of the City

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In the seemingly endless and eternal city of Ararat there are men (some call them mad men) who consider themselves travelers. Their goal is the Mountain that looms above the city. No one knows what is up there, it is seemingly unreachable, no one who has tried to go there has succeeded, but all hope to find something there: power, beauty, wealth, knowledge, the answers to secrets. Arjun is such a traveler. He can step through doors into any place and time in the city using his love of music. He came to the city searching for his god and he believes his god is on the Mountain, so of course he finally feels he must attempt to do what so many have tried to do before. And like the others, he fails.

He awakes in the darkness, imprisoned in a room with a strange creature in a cage, a large lizard that claims to know the future and the past. He cannot remember who he is or what he has done. He is one of the many "ghosts," men without memories, who have appeared in the city in its last days when rumors of a final war are rife and life is grim and grey, ruled by dark factories and local thugs called the Know-Nothings. Arjun escapes from the room in the deep basement of a fantastical museum that has been closed to the public. He is helped by two mysterious sisters who beg him to search for their missing third sister. Arjun begins a strange journey intersecting with dangerous men from his past, the continuing allure of the Mountain, the mystery of the prophetic beast and the secrets of the vast and ancient City.

There are battles and danger and suspense, but the City and the Mountain and the people who wish to explore and control it are the focus, rather than events and plot and characterization. The characters are all interesting unique. Ruth Low is the kindly sister who has a tender spot for the poor, memory-stripped "ghosts" who are rumored to have fallen from the Mountain. She is not as smart or beautiful as her missing sister Ivy, nor as practical and tough as her sister Marta, but her principles and her desire to help makes her crucial to the fate of the City. There is the decadent Brace-Bel who seeks to outrage the gods. There is Inspector Maury of the Know-Nothings, just doing his duty in a world where that duty can change in a moment. But most of all the book is about the failing City (and Mountain), the odd neighborhoods, the lack of ways out even for the travelers, the threat of destruction and war, the enigmatic Shay who has had his hand in intrigues throughout the history of the City, and the final attempt at reaching the Mountain to find the answers there.

They prose is slow and rich, well written and magical. If you prefer something simpler and more straightforward, wizards on quests or mysteries to be solved, this isn't the book for you. It has some very small Steampunk elements, but only as throwaways (reference to gears, airships attack). But this is literary SF/F, so that's not important. The importance is in the imagery and the ideas and the meandering through an imaginative world with unexpected and people and creatures and events that comes startlingly alive.

I did not read the first book and I think this could be read as a stand-alone (unless one is a completist, in which case you'd begin at the beginning anyway).

This is the second book in the series, the first book is Thunderer, you want to go get the first book and read it before getting this book to help ground you in what is happening in Gears of the City. This book takes place after thunderer, and you really need the continuity check on this one. Gilman continues his dark and gritty almost dark city like book, with Arjun finding himself in the Ararat district at the foot of the "mountain". The mountain is said to be the home of the gods, and people who try to climb the mountain lose everything, memory, self, and are known as Ghosts when they come back, if they come back at all. Arjun has to learn that he spent time climbing the mountain to see if he can find his lost god, or a suitable replacement god.

Mr. Shay steps back into the picture after Arjun is slowly nursed back to health by two local women who talk Arjun into saving their sister from Mr. Shay. This is a much more political book, with excellent plots and undertones throughout to please just about anyone who has watched dark city. While the city is slowly falling apart, the gods are gone, the city run by petty despots, the second book is much more about people and how they interact and interrelate with each other, class struggle, despots, paranoia and hopelessness. Not something to read if you are already wondering what you want to do with your life.

The good part is that at points, hope shines through; there are wins here, even though people are driven by their obsessions when it comes to some things. There is a lot of just downright bizarre that feels out of place, but this is a great vision of who we are. How we deal with adverse events, and how we overcome our own limitations. Even though the book is not for the depressed already, it is worth reading if you like your science fiction with a dash of politics, a large helping of darkness, and some just plain old outrageous behavior.

Rated this book five of five, at times hard to read, but overall enjoyable, with moments you have to re read things again just to make sure you get it. Not a stay up all night book, this is more one of those read a chapter, think on it, read another chapter, think on it kind of books.

I just finished reading this, the second book in the Ararat duology, and am stunned and fascinated by the weirdness of it. Firstly, it reminded me of Alex Proyas' "Dark City," only with fantasy elements mixed in along side the science fictional elements. The other major difference is the size of the city of Ararat, which is infinite, as apposed to the finite size of the "Dark City." The infinite variety contained in Ararat is my first reason for enjoying the duology. I liked how skillfully Gilman described the various Ages of the city. They were very exotic and oftentimes very weird. It makes me want to visit them, the less dangerous ones at least. The various Ages of the city could make for a very interesting shared world anthology. In addition to the infinite Ages depicted in the two books, I liked the surprise twist revealed in the second half of the "Gears of the City," which reveals the true nature of the city and its attendant worlds. It turns out they arn't as natural as it first appears. This is what makes it very similar to the "Matrix" and especially "Dark City." These various reasons make for a weird and wonderful duology.

A fascinating fantasy novel, very well-written. The prose isn't quite as blisteringly fast-paced here as in "The Half-Made World", but make no mistake -- Gilman weaves epics before other writers get out of bed.

Where "Thunderer" used the god-seeking pilgrim Arjun to introduce us to the infinite, eternal, and ever-changing city of Ararat, "Gears of the City" serves as a satisfying "Part 2", and takes a decidedly bleaker tone. Having had the multiplicity of Ararat made clear to us, Gilman now takes us to the city-at-the-end-of-the-city: a bleak workers' sprawl, in the shadow of The Mountain, where factories, time-cards, and secret police rule the lives of the citizens, music is no more, and the doors through time and space have all been cut off.

Its orgies and cultist revolutions aren't quite as magical or fantastic as "Thunderer", which at times felt downright whimsical, but it has much more thrust and pathos. Secrets are revealed as to the nature of the city, the gods who walk its streets, The Mountain, and the mysterious time-hopping trickster Shay. Tricky existential questions are raised and deftly-handled. Fun is had with the conceit of time travel and infinite parallel realities; a defect in one man's character becomes bound up in the metaphysical troubles of the entire universe. The book starts slow, introducing a slew of new characters as Gilman folds us back into the intrigues of the city. But after the midway-mark "battle" the book takes off like a rocket.

It does end pretty conclusively. I don't know what's left to be said of Ararat at this point -- but it still leaves me wanting more. Thank god Gilman is so prolific.

Highly recommend. Though I'd avoid the e-book version if you can; there's typos and formatting errors all over the place.

The first of Felix Gilman's books I read was The Half-Made World, which I strongly recommend. I moved on to his first novel, Thunderers, in which he crafts a rich world where a fabled city is itself a character in the book. Much was left unexplored in Thunderers, so I'd hoped that Gears of the City would further elaborate the gods, the characters, the times of the city, and the origins of the city. Gears of the City tries to do this, though it does so in a chaotic and episodic manner that takes far too long to reach a muddled dénouement. I skimmed the final quarter of the book.

With that said, I still recommend that you read Gears of the City. Gilman's storytelling has a compelling something about it that grabs your attention, even when he's not at his best.

Now a note about the Kindle edition: I want to be clear that I'm not giving Gears of the City three stars because of the poor Kindle edition. It's not fair to rate an author's book this way when the author simply has no say about how the e-version goes out. The Kindle edition, however, is a mess. I fail to understand why some Kindle editions are poorly formatted and filled with typographical errors when they are distributed by mainstream publishers such as Spectra... publishers that presumably have staff capable of proofing e-version manuscripts. It seemed as though half the sections of the book didn't have section spacing, the other half did. Typos abounded from the conversion process. To list a few (and only a few):

haifa = half a
bitei = bite? (question marks frequently were replaced by the letter "i")
m = in
oi = of
Aegler = Zeigler
2/ = It

Two or three words often were combined into one: ButImust, ofthing, for example. Words were interrupted with random spaces: arch elogi st's, th ere, for example. Quotation marks and apostrophes were shown backwards enough times that the error stuck out.

For this reason, I don't recommend buying the Kindle edition. I read Thunderers in hard-cover, so I can't say whether its Kindle edition is also plagued with conversion errors. However, it *was* published by Spectra, too. The Half-Made World, released by Tor, did not have these problems.

Arjun is lost as he wanders the dark gloomy city Ararat that he does not recognize. He is weary and a bit frightened because his amnesia is so deep he cannot recall his name. He feels like a forlorn ghost being hunted by brutal hollow men. Only because of his rescuers the Low Sisters and the words of a prophesy does he use the moniker Arjun, which feels right so he assumes is his real name though he cannot be sure.

He does believe he is on a quest as he volunteers to find his hosts' missing third sister trapped by a ghost like him inside the ominous Mountain palace; he also thinks that someone is trying to prevent him from succeeding on his mission by stealing his memory. Arjun feels he must gain access to the nearby Mountain that rises above the city, but he has not been able to break free as if the stronghold repels his efforts though he knows it is more physical with traps than metaphysical. If he fails on his quest Arjun assumes the Mountain will spread the darkness through all space and time; only he can prevent the engulfing of his world.

This is a superb strange science fiction thriller that hints at paranormal elements with the ethereal sinister Mountain casting an evil shadow on the city and its residents. Fans will wonder whether the Mountain is advanced technology or otherworldly as Arjun goes about his quest. He is a solid character even with no memory while the Low Sisters are developed enough to enhance the mystery of the Mountain in the key role of menacing antagonist with what the palace apparently has done to Ararat including Arjun. Fans will enjoy this brooding portentous quest thriller as Felix Gilman keeps the audience engaged wondering what is the Mountain.

Harriet Klausner

I did not know the size of this book as I bought it for Kindle. I noticed after some time of reading I was only 30 percent through the book. Luckily on the Kindle I can read 2 or more books at a time. I thought I would drop the book for good and went to another book but left Gears on my Kindle. Well, I went back to it. I can well imagine dropping and going back a few more times as it is a bit slow and meandering in places, however I can without doubt tell you I will finish the book. It is leaps and bounds beyond much fantasy and give you much to thing about its world and characters.