Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti [Paperback]

Genevieve Valentine (Author), Kiri Moth (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 25, 2011

Come inside and take a seat, the show is about to begin...

Outside any city still standing, the Mechanical Circus Tresaulti sets up its tents. Crowds pack the benches to gawk at the brass-and-copper troupe and their impossible feats: Ayar the Strong Man, the acrobatic Grimaldi Brothers, fearless Elena and her aerialists who perform on living trapezes. War is everywhere, but while the Circus is performing, the world is magic.

That magic is no accident: Boss builds her circus from the bones out, molding a mechanical company that will survive the unforgiving landscape. But even a careful ringmaster can make mistakes.

Two of Tresaulti's performers are entangled in a secret standoff that threatens to tear the circus apart just as the war lands on their doorstep. Now the Circus must fight a war on two fronts: one from the outside, and a more dangerous one from within.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This steampunk-flavored circus story begins with a disturbing undertone, like an out-of-tune calliope, and develops in hints and shadows. Touring a drained postwar world, the Mechanical Circus Tresaulti rarely visits a city twice in anyone's lifetime; borders are lax, and lives are short. The circus's performers have no time for training, instead undergoing terrible trials in the ringmaster's workshop to gain their skills. Enter the "government man," who dreams of bringing back the order and security of the old world and wants the ringmaster to help him. She shares many of his dreams but mistrusts his offers of alliance. The drama and climax come not from the rivalry between the two but their similarities as they decide how to use their powers and who will suffer the consequences. Fans of grim fantasy will love this menacing and fascinating debut." --Publishers Weekly

"{T]his "Tale of the Circus Tresaulti" doesn't resemble steampunk so much as Gothic in the tradition of Poe and Mary Shelley, where a lone inventor's creations mingle science with the occult... Beginning as fractured narrative, offering only hints and glimpses of the truth, Mechanique comes together as the story of a strange collective which can't remain entirely untouched by the outer world, though it seems to move in its own private sphere. While they're neither a band of demigods nor a group of superheroes in haphazard alliance, these retooled traveling players have a collective power not even they quite realize. Misfits, desperados, ordinary schmoes - whatever they were has undergone a metamorphosis. Shabby as it may seem, the Circus Tresaulti can exude the aura of timeless myth and legend . . . Beyond every revelation, setback and dramatic moment, the wonder remains." -- Locus

"Mechanique is set in a magical, post-apocalyptic future in which a circus of magical, immortal, mechanical men and women wends its way through a barren landscape between cities torn by a ceaseless war...This is a beautiful little jewel of a book, told in scintillating little flashes like light through the facets of a gem. It offers unreliable point of view, an omniscient narrator who almost dissolves into the narrative, and a series of striking, fantastic images that only slowly reveal the shape of the story behind them. It's beautifully written from the sentence level to the structural . . . " --Realms of Fantasy

"Mechanique is a brutal gem of a novel--a fierce, gilded textual circus." -- Cherie Priest, bestselling author of Boneshaker and Dreadnought

"Mechanique is something unique and elegant."-- io9 -- io9.com

"This steampunk-flavored circus story begins with a disturbing undertone, like an out-of-tune calliope, and develops in hints and shadows. Touring a drained postwar world, the Mechanical Circus Tresaulti rarely visits a city twice in anyone's lifetime; borders are lax, and lives are short. The circus's performers have no time for training, instead undergoing terrible trials in the ringmaster's workshop to gain their skills. Enter the "government man," who dreams of bringing back the order and security of the old world and wants the ringmaster to help him. She shares many of his dreams but mistrusts his offers of alliance. The drama and climax come not from the rivalry between the two but their similarities as they decide how to use their powers and who will suffer the consequences. Fans of grim fantasy will love this menacing and fascinating debut." --Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Valentine's novel has the stylized quality of books by Angela Carter like "The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman," and it displays similar pyrotechnics. Run by a woman known as Boss, the traveling Circus Tresaulti ekes out its existence against a postapocalyptic backdrop of cities rebuilding after "the bombs and the radiation." The setting is unimaginative, but the circus performers, most of them mechanically altered to enhance their acts, come to life in a series of skillful set pieces. Chief among these performers are the aerialists Alec, who has recently (and intentionally) fallen to his death, and Bird, who has replaced him. Together they give the novel its emotional force, as Valentine keeps returning to the reasons for Alec's death: "For anyone who sees it, a moment like that is never in the past; it is always happening. . . . When Bird falls, Alec is falling." In contrast to the complexity of that haunting echo, the plot is more basic, involving the threat from a dastardly "government man." Yet in a highwire act of her own, Valentine still raises the novel above the ordinary through her ability to convey the richness of the circus performers' emotional lives, coupled with impressive writing -- as in a description of Alec's surgically attached wings, every bone-and-brass feather "jigsawed and hammered and smoothed so thin that when it strikes another feather it rings out a clear note."" --The New York Times

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Prime Books; Second Ed edition (April 25, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1607012537
• ISBN-13: 978-1607012535
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.2 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #312,297 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Genevieve Valentine's fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, Journal of Mythic Arts, Fantasy Magazine, and Apex, and in the anthologies Federations, The Way of the Wizard, Running with the Pack, Teeth, and more. Her nonfiction has appeared in Lightspeed, Weird Tales, Tor.com, and Fantasy Magazine.

Her first novel, Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti, is forthcoming from Prime Books.

Her appetite for bad movies is insatiable, a tragedy she tracks on her blog at genevievevalentine.com. She is currently working on a formula to evaluate the awfulness of any given film, a scale that will be measured in Julians to honor Julian Sands, who has bravely uttered some of the worst lines ever filmed,in some of the worst wigs ever made.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars mechanique review July 9, 2011

By R. J. Schoonover

Format:Paperback

I wasn't sure what to expect when I picked up this book. I'll admit it, I bought Mechanique because the cover and the title intrigued me and I had a 30% off coupon for Borders (Sorry Amazon). After getting it home I assumed, after briefly skimming the synopsis on the back cover, that Mechanique was going to be a steampunk novel about a travelling circus. Boy was I wrong! I guess I should have read the synopsis a bit closer. I started the book at 530pm, after I got home from work. I had assumed that it would be easy to put it down to make dinner and go to bed early since I had to be up early the next day. No. Everyone has been told by a teacher at some point in their life to never assume. This is what that teacher was taking about. I ended up ordering pizza for dinner and staying up until after midnight because I could not put this book down.
This story about a dystopian world in which magic and the mechanical seem to coexist fascinated me. At first Valentine's writing grated on my nerves. The tenses were constantly changing and every page had approximately three parenthetical statements. However after the first few chapters I realized that it seemed as if these "flaws" were intended to throw the reader for a loop, quite like a real circus. Valentine is a ringleader and this novel is her circus.
Don't make the mistake of believing this to be a steampunk novel about a circus. It's so much more. Trying to stay away from spoilers I believe I can say that Boss fixes people that are broken. She changes them into something else, something more or less than human. In a world surrounded by war she creates her own community, her own army, of misfits. Her characters become real people that I felt for. Valentine has created a world that sucks you in and refuses to let you go.

If you like this book you may want to read:
Eternity Road by Jack McDevitt (ISBN: 978-0061054273)
The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (ISBN: 978-1597801584)
The Court of the Air by Stephen Hunt (ISBN: 978-0765360229)

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Finest Spectacle Anywhere May 9, 2011

By Sarah A

Format:Paperback

Dark and tense and powerful. One of very few contemporary novels that didn't have any missteps for me. Every plot point and characterization felt inevitable and right.

The writing is gorgeous--lyrical and dramatic without being overwrought. Every so often there is a phrase that makes you feel like you've just been punched...in a good way. The characters are compelling, tough, and vividly drawn.

If you think you might like this, you probably will. But I'd also recommend this to people who aren't particularly interested in steampunk, or fantasy, or circuses, or post-apocalyptic fiction, so long as you really like elegant prose and are willing to try something different.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Mechanique will haunt your dreams. June 2, 2011

By The Mad Hatter VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

In a post-apocalyptic landscape a circus wanders around the waste from small enclave of life to the next in a never ending journey to entrance audiences with their wonders and grotesqueries. They may only visit a town once in a lifetime, if you're lucky, so get in while you can. Just don't tag along unless you have a strong heart unless you don't have a problem with it being replaced with scrap metal.

Last year Paul Jessup wrote an article that served as almost a call to action on what he was hoping for out of Steampunk in the future. A Steampunk novel that wasn't just Victorian. That wasn't just all about cogs and steam. That wasn't about colonialism and white people. Well the answer to his mandate has been answered by Valentine with a very dark and melodic first novel that consists of an unforgettable story that stays with you long after you finish the last page. Mechanique will haunt your dreams.

Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti is a novel of disparities. Disparities of time, love, and of what life is and should be. Even of what life could be, but probably shouldn't be.

Life in any circus can be hard. Hard for all the traveling, setup, and performing. But the Tresaulti circus is an entirely different beast. Like none you've seen before. It is filled with moody characters desiring what someone else has even if that something is another person or a part of a person. Somehow Valentine makes a group of mostly unlikable characters into a family. A family you end up caring quite a bit about. I was surprised how much I came to care for each and every one of them. Even those I loathed and couldn't entirely comprehend.

The pacing and style take quite a few chapters to get a handle on, but all the hard work pays off in this slim volume that is heavy with meaning. We flip back and forth through time seemingly at random that starts with the mention of the death of a character who we only relive through the memories of others. Each chapter acts almost as a standalone short story as Valentine has gone with her strengths of less is more. Each and every word is important and has reverberations throughout the narrative as the characters search for what comes next.

The Steampunk aspects appear more magical than mechanical, but each and every touch is done thoughtfully and with verve. Sure there are people with mechanical arms and wings, but this story is so much more than Steampunk. Mechanique actually has more in common with New Weird given its horror influences. Fans of early Mieville and VanderMeer will fall in love.

Mechanique is best experienced for yourself rather than reading an analysis. All those that like challenging reads should give this a chance and even a few of you who don't. On it surface you can simply enjoy it for the circus motifs and post-apocalyptic side. For you Steampunk fans this is one of the most original novels you'll ever find around the genre. For those that go deeper you'll be richly rewarded. I can't wait to see what Valentine has in store for us next. She is a voice to watch.