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Title: Devices and Desires
Author: K.J. Parker
Genre: Steampunk (first of trilogy)
Thingummies: 5
Synopsis: Condemned to death for innovation, an engineer escapes and starts a war that will bring down three countries.
Thoughts: There's an inevitability to this book that is like watching a car accident in slow motion from the side of the road. You can see where things are headed long before most of the drivers do, and yet there is little in the world that can stop it.
The main characters are all deeply likeable people, despite terrible flaws. Duke Orsea is hopelessly inadequate for his job, and knows it, and is nonetheless trapped. Duke Valens is exceptional at his, and knows it, and fools himself into believing that he is impartial enough not to make the worst possible mistakes for the sake of emotion. And engineer Ziani--he wants the simplest things, and lost them for the sake of the smallest error. But his willingness to set the world on fire as a result, and to convince himself that he has no choice, is monstrous. And yet, I liked him perhaps most of all.
My one real quibble is with Veatriz, the Guinevere of this story, who is just a little too much of a maiden-on-a-pedestal. At least three people are fully in love with her, and nearly everyone who meets her seems to be half in love with her, but she's never developed enough to be more than a Victorian archetype. Hopefully she gets a little more complexity of her own in the subsequent books.
This is a book about, not just whether the ends justify the means, but whether the ends justify the collateral damage. And so, despite flashes of humor and a tender understanding of the human heart, it's dark and clearly going even darker places in the rest of the trilogy. I want to know what happens, and I want to spend more time with the characters. But I'll admit being a little afraid of where that will take me.
Author: K.J. Parker
Genre: Steampunk (first of trilogy)
Thingummies: 5
Synopsis: Condemned to death for innovation, an engineer escapes and starts a war that will bring down three countries.
Thoughts: There's an inevitability to this book that is like watching a car accident in slow motion from the side of the road. You can see where things are headed long before most of the drivers do, and yet there is little in the world that can stop it.
The main characters are all deeply likeable people, despite terrible flaws. Duke Orsea is hopelessly inadequate for his job, and knows it, and is nonetheless trapped. Duke Valens is exceptional at his, and knows it, and fools himself into believing that he is impartial enough not to make the worst possible mistakes for the sake of emotion. And engineer Ziani--he wants the simplest things, and lost them for the sake of the smallest error. But his willingness to set the world on fire as a result, and to convince himself that he has no choice, is monstrous. And yet, I liked him perhaps most of all.
My one real quibble is with Veatriz, the Guinevere of this story, who is just a little too much of a maiden-on-a-pedestal. At least three people are fully in love with her, and nearly everyone who meets her seems to be half in love with her, but she's never developed enough to be more than a Victorian archetype. Hopefully she gets a little more complexity of her own in the subsequent books.
This is a book about, not just whether the ends justify the means, but whether the ends justify the collateral damage. And so, despite flashes of humor and a tender understanding of the human heart, it's dark and clearly going even darker places in the rest of the trilogy. I want to know what happens, and I want to spend more time with the characters. But I'll admit being a little afraid of where that will take me.
