Pinion [Hardcover]

Jay Lake (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 30, 2010

"The delight is in what's seen en route, as Lake has configured his world-dominating empires, one British, the other Chinese, with huge and devoted attention to the last detail. The delight of the next volume--prefigured with unrelenting clarity in Escapement's final pages--should be the discovery that the destination adds up."
--Washington Post Book World on Escapement

Rejoin the Librarian and the Chinese submarine captain, the British sailor, the clockwork man, and the young sorceress who has gone south of the great equatorial wall.  This adventure in Lake’s Clockwork Earth continues the tale begun in Escapement.

"The very cosmology of this world is an enigmatic astonishment, and it underpins every single bit of action and character….Lake has a ball transporting his characters up and down this magnificent world, subjecting them to all sorts of perils and escapes in a wild variety of settings. His three main protagonists all exhibit distinct and memorable personalities that allow us to filter their world through three prisms of intelligence and attitude….Fantasy has always been "escapist" in the best sense of the word, and Lake engineers a fine tale of humans in search of liberation from the clockwork and customs that ensnare them and us as well."
--Sci-Fi Weekly on Escapement

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Political conflicts and philosophical arguments find closure at last in this splendidly baroque whirl of geomancy and Victorian clockwork. Young Paolina Barthes, the gear-minded prodigy who became a target for the empire-building ambitions of rival governments in 2009's Escapement, is on the run, heading south over the Wall that God built to divide the hemispheres and keep the Earth's gear turning through the heavens. As spies and ancient secret societies scramble to find her, Paolina struggles to learn how to control her world-shaking abilities, while her heart pulls her toward Boaz, a golemlike man of brass. Lake wields big themes—magic and religion versus science, free will, colonialism, and a bit of romance—with surprising elegance, and readers will enjoy cherishing the characters and pondering the concepts of this clockpunk world. (Apr.)
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From Booklist

Lake returns to the clockwork Earth of Mainspring (2007) and Escapement (2008) to resume the intertwining stories of Paolina Barthes, the Mask Childress, the Chinese clerk Wang, and Mr. Kitchens. Paolina is traveling south of the Wall into mysterious lands populated by sorcerers, where she hopes to escape the grasping power of the men of the north and learn to use the power of her gleam more wisely. Childress travels aboard a renegade Chinese submarine. Kitchens is on a mission to discover what has transpired with mad Dr. Ottweill’s attempt to drill through the Wall. At the whim of his master, Wang, aboard a ship of condemned men, chases Childress through hostile waters, occasionally aided by a female monk capable of moving invisibly on the ship at sea as well as in great cities. She and Wang are navigating the complex machinations of the secret societies the White Birds and the Silent Order and preventing the worst of a Sino-English war. As before, Lake’s world is multifaceted, fascinating, quite filled with satisfying adventure and intrigue. --Regina Schroeder

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; First Edition edition (March 30, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765321866
• ISBN-13: 978-0765321862
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,163,385 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jay Lake lives in Portland, Oregon, where he works on numerous writing and editing projects. His 2010 books are _Pinion_ from Tor Books, _The Baby Killers_ from PS Publishing, and _The Sky That Wraps_ from Subterranean Press. His short fiction appears regularly in literary and genre markets worldwide. Jay is a winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and a multiple nominee for the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards. Jay can be reached through his Web site at jlake.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars As Above; So Below, April 5, 2010

By 

JFBeilman "Bibliophile" (Wichita, KS United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Pinion (Hardcover)

This is a wonderfully complex conclusion to what I refer to as the Clockwork Earth series. What I liked most about this novel is how the major changes occuring in the clockwork setting are mirrored in minds of Paulina and Boaz. What is depicted is the coming together of faith and reason and also the incorperation of free- will into a previously deterministic reality. And also, there is a wonderful metaphor of the "Golden Bridge," being like the connection between the right and left hemisphere of the brain; with the right being the Southern Earth and the left being the Northern Earth. There is also a strong suggestion of pantheism with the Mind of God being divided between the Silent World of the Southern Earth and the Judeo-Christion God of the Northern Earth.
I especially liked Boaz, who reminds me of Star-trek's Data. I was fascinated by this clockwork automaton's mental transformation from machine to human, which closely reflects the Clock-work Earth's transformation to a more free-willed and blended state. This, in my mind, makes this series similar in theme to the Veil trilogy by Christopher Golden. In that series, there is also a few characters whose transformations parallel the transformation of the setting; and the coming together of magic and reason.
The book's characters and setting was so good that I was disappionted when it was over.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars deeply satisfying and thought provoking, April 6, 2010

By 

Frank C. Knapp "haikucat" (NEWPORT, RI USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Pinion (Hardcover)

Having just finished Pinion, I sit here feeling the reverberations of an epic tale, threads of feeling and memory excited by the story but vibrating in my life.
Acceptance of the arcane world envisioned in Jay Lake's trilogy happened for me almost without notice. Love and loyalty, duty and courage, fear and resolve are themes central to human experience. Magic and a clockwork universe become accepted vehicles for an interplay of human potential one can recognise and rejoice in as both possible and of great worth.
If feelings are a legitimate compass with which to chart our course,Pinion and its predecessors are on a path running true north.

5 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars strong thought provoking thriller, April 1, 2010

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pinion (Hardcover)

Paolina Barthes the sorceress has caused havoc upsetting the God given gears of the northern hemisphere. Rival ambitious groups The Silent Order and the White Birds pursue her to gain control of her "free will" magic that each believes will allow them to become the absolute authority in the north. Paolina flees southward with plans to do the impossible of crossing over The Equatorial Wall that God constructed to keep earth rotating through heaven

On the other side of the Great Wall that God built is The Southern Empire whose mystics gear for the coming of Paolina. They know what she has done to the clockwork precision balance in the north and want to prevent her heresy wrecking their society as granted to them by God as their right to rule. These mystics do not idly await the arrival of the destroyer, but instead go after Paolina's beloved Boaz the brass man and Childress the Mask librarian who travel in a Chinese sub.

The final tale in the Clockwork Earth saga (see Escapement and Mainspring) is a terrific climax to a strong thought provoking thriller. Jay Lake magically mixes his big metaphysical themes with a deep cast starring in an electrifying fast-paced story line. Readers will fully appreciate Pinion as Mr. Lake takes the audience on a profound philosophical comparison of religion and magic vs. science; especially free will vs. pre-determinism and subjection. With two prime subplots filled with action, Paolina still holds the novel together as the heretic beginning a revolution in thought similar perhaps to the Renaissance or more so the transformation from the divine rights of kings to the Age of Reason. This is great finish, but newcomers need to read the previous entries first or be lost in the precision of Clockwork Earth.

Harriet Klausner