Customer Reviews

Mainspring

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I'll start it short: This is a terrible book.

The premise is excellent, as is the cover. The execution, however, is amateurish at best and laughable at worst. There were some 4 star moments, though - the journey, to be fair, proceeded as follows:

3 stars, 4 stars, 3, 4, 2, 2, 1...

The second half of this book is so unsatisfying, and the ending so trite and faux-didactic that I had trouble not throwing it across the room. As a massive sf/fantasy literary snob (China Mieville is my hero), I was actually insulted to have been conned into buying and reading this book.

The premise is classic steampunk/clockpunk - what if the solar system were a giant clockwork mechanism, and the planet was winding down and needed to be rewound? The book, however, is classic bait-and-switch. There is no steampunk here beyond the premise, and after the halfway point the book just becomes tiresome and tedious. The main character is uninteresting, his 'perils' uninspiring, and we are never concerned that he is in any danger of failure on his quest. Actions, scenes, characters and ideas are thrown around, but the author never does us the courtesy of explaining them. The message of the entire book seems to be 'trust in god' which never sits well with me anyway, but this message isn't even delivered in an interesting way. A massive, massive disappointment, and I should probably give the book away to someone I don't like.

Have I mentioned how terrible this book is? Well, let's ignore a pointless sex scene thrown in randomly later in the book to establish a growing bond between the main character and his nominal girlfriend; let's ignore the impossible nature of the equatorial gear crossing (Imagine the worst possible writing mistake about a world where the baseline earth is a giant clockwork mechanism and the concept of gears is fundamental??? Try thinking about the shape of a gear for a second, just one second, a fraction of time less than it would have taken the author to google a picture of a gear, for example...); let's ignore foolish exposition and grade school philosophy and metaphysics that makes the Matrix look like holy revelation by comparison; let's ignore long, tedious travelling scenes followed by condescendingly short and ridiculous action scenes with monsters who appear for no reason and out of nowhere... What's left to ignore?

There was a tiny fraction of potential in this novel, and it was wasted.

I think Jay Lake should go read Polystom: Two Universes in One Reality (Gollancz). That was an excellent take on a similar idea. It even had a point! This, however wasn't and hadn't.

This is very clever idea. What if the idea of the Universe as a clockwork mechanism was not merely a metaphor but literally true? Lake constructs a clever alternate universe based on this idea. He also inserts a clever religious theme. Unfortunately, characterization and quality of writing are not particularly good and the plot is perhaps too elaborate.

How do you ruin a great short story? Turn it into a novel. Great premise (though not entirely original) that could have really gone somewhere if it had only gotten there sooner. For an author who made his name writing short stories, he really does yammer on in this novel. And the story's mainspring winds down about halfway through.

Lake should have deleted that third quarter of this book and put his energy into crafting a better ending. It wasn't that I didn't understand the ending, it was that I thought the ending was weak and hastily written. He spent long sections dwelling on pointless environmental detail during the adventure, but at the end, he summarizes major plot points in a single sentence.

Clearly it's a fable, probably an Intelligent Design fable... but I think that's just a stylistic choice to get off the hook for the weak logic. He alternates between reveling in his world building skills and describing things in detail, as if to say, "this could really work!" But when he gets too close to serious engineering questions, he leaves that vague and uses God to explain it. That's not Steampunk as some reviewers have said, that's Faithpunk. (Incidentally, anyone who knows anything about mechanical engineering will tell you that the gear he describes for the Earth's rotation would vibrate so horribly that not only would people near it go deaf, but the whole planet would also be shaken apart.)

Jay Lake comes off as very sharp and insightful in interviews. I wonder why there wasn't more of that in this book.

Lake does well with setting the stage and presenting uncommon ideas in a common and familiar era. Interesting characters, scenery and uncommon mechanical devices set the plot in an exciting direction towards a fascinating journey well up there with some of the most imaginative dreams to date.

Unfortunately well into the second half of the story everything mentioned previous stalls and leaves the reader wondering if there's a point in finishing the adventure. What's a build up to what could be an exciting bizzaro world of the story's period turns into a grinding reading experience leaving the reader puzzled where Lake lost the magic? The reader is taken from a wonderful fantasy world to a barely juvenile fantasy. Bit of a letdown but willing to take a look at Lakes next novel based on reviews.

Mainspring is one of those books that you know is 5 stars within a few pages and the impression never leaves. It puts you in to the story immediately without a boring introduction. Even at the end, which I feel some ambivalence towards (having just finished it an hour ago), I felt I had read a particularly good book worth recommending to others. The book is in its essence a clockpunk heroes journey through a deeply imagined setting. If you have a love for any of the cyberpunk descended genres this book should satisfy you. But unlike most of the punk genres, faith is on the side of the heroes, since the hero is on a journey given to him by the archangel Gabriel. In many instances it is the faith of the hero and his allies that provides for them in crisis.
Much of the story felt like it would have been a masterwork of counter-cultural critique at the height of the British Empire which initially made it feel written too late, but on consideration seemed to apply just as much today to the casual hubris of modern empire. All of this makes the book sort of a slow read as I often felt compelled to think on what I had read rather than to keep reading. Don't mistake this for the book being preachy, it is not, it merely gives the amorphous feeling of meaningfulness and import. This might be due to how well the hero has been characterized. Since his entire journey is full of import and meaning to him, it passes that impression to the reader.
While there are a few tried and true recyclings in the book, most notably the discovery of sex leading to the realization that this is what has all the preachers angry on sunday, the book in the main avoids dully repeating what we have all seen before, even in other genres. It does follow the hero's journey, but Jay lake has definitely flexed his imagination in the execution of it. This book strays pleasantly from the beaten path and ends up being a true pleasure to read.

I really liked a lot of the ideas in this book and would love to see a more ambitious or experienced author take them and run with them, but it's apparent that this author is a noted short story writer and that this is his first novel. Reading it was like seeing the movie adaptation of a SNL skit.

It's worth reading if you have part of a day to kill but it's a stretch to call it steampunk and only the (boring and unnecessary) sex scenes push it out of the young teen target demographic. Or maybe they put it right square in the middle, who knows.

I honestly think Jay Lake just had no idea how to end the book. About halfway through, the story starts fizzling out, and it just goes downhill from there. It's a shame, because the idea was incredible, and as someone said, at the beginning you feel like it'll be a "five-star book." But it's clear that Lake didn't have any idea what to do with the stunning world he'd created, and he just sends his character wandering around aimlessly until the end. Not good.

But it's also not a great book. I can't say it's not worth reading but it's also not one I'll be telling everyone they HAVE to read. I think my biggest problem with the book was at no point in the novel did I ever feel like the main character would or could for that matter, fail in his task. It's all just too easy. In a book that's about man and God and man's relationship to God and God demands of man you'd expect the lead character to struggle, to truly have his faith challenged; instead the test of faith, the crux of the story, the resolution and solution are all jammed hurriedly into the last four or five pages.
The concept of a clockwork Earth is interesting but the development of that aspect of the story is slow to come and not gone into in any great depth.
It's worth reading. I did enjoyed it. I just think it had the potential to be a far better novel but never reached far or hard enough to get there.

This book seemed to have great potential. However, the ending makes no sense. None whatsoever. It's as if the author had no idea where to go for the last 50 pages of the book. Nothing is resolved and the main character is just pointless. I'm very glad that I got this out of the library rather than paying for it myself.

I feel guilty for putting such a low review (**) but I really can't find enough in the story to justify much higher. Steampunk is a fantastic subgenre and in many ways this story does an excellent job capturing that setting. At times I could just close my eyes and mull over how cool something was (like the cliff side city). Yet rattling around in this Steampunk world was a rather tiresome plot and some slightly offensive overtones. It's difficult to put into words.

There's a thin line sometimes between having certain traits exist within a world you create and a glorification of those traits. Not recommended for people who aren't 16-28 years old, white, straight and male.