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juushikaTitle: The Engine's Child
Author: Holly Phillips
Published: New York: Del Ray, 2008
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 286
Total Page Count: 162,322
Text Number: 474
Read Because: fan of the author, from my personal collection
Review: On the island of the rasnan, select groups begin to harness the forbidden power of the mundab, the endless inhospitable sea that surrounds the vulnerable island. Steampunk tends to be 80% aesthetic and 20% -punk, all the romanticization with little of the technology- and change-kindled anxieties. The Engine's Child isn't steampunk, but it's a fascinating counterpoint. It has similar themes, its own strong aesthetic—not Victorian, but seaside: ivory towers towering over endless waters, suffused with monsoon rains and flickering candles, a caste- and religion-bound society—but it makes anxiety its central focus. The mundab is simultaneously the outside world, the magical and technological powers that the society's ancestors fled, and the possibility of change. Phillips awakens it like a golem. She's the perfect author to meld theme and woldbuilding into a living, half-corporeal, monstrous machine.
But this is a prickly book. Both protagonists are unreliable and unkind, and Phillips has an intentionally stilted voice. She plays precise sensory description against conflicted and secretive emotions (set within a number of invented terms and honorifics), and the plot can get buried under that: it's not complex, just difficult to tease out, and as such somewhat underwhelming. This is an easy book to admire and a difficult book to love. As such I can't particularly recommend it, but I wish more writers would do what Phillips does here.
Author: Holly Phillips
Published: New York: Del Ray, 2008
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 286
Total Page Count: 162,322
Text Number: 474
Read Because: fan of the author, from my personal collection
Review: On the island of the rasnan, select groups begin to harness the forbidden power of the mundab, the endless inhospitable sea that surrounds the vulnerable island. Steampunk tends to be 80% aesthetic and 20% -punk, all the romanticization with little of the technology- and change-kindled anxieties. The Engine's Child isn't steampunk, but it's a fascinating counterpoint. It has similar themes, its own strong aesthetic—not Victorian, but seaside: ivory towers towering over endless waters, suffused with monsoon rains and flickering candles, a caste- and religion-bound society—but it makes anxiety its central focus. The mundab is simultaneously the outside world, the magical and technological powers that the society's ancestors fled, and the possibility of change. Phillips awakens it like a golem. She's the perfect author to meld theme and woldbuilding into a living, half-corporeal, monstrous machine.
But this is a prickly book. Both protagonists are unreliable and unkind, and Phillips has an intentionally stilted voice. She plays precise sensory description against conflicted and secretive emotions (set within a number of invented terms and honorifics), and the plot can get buried under that: it's not complex, just difficult to tease out, and as such somewhat underwhelming. This is an easy book to admire and a difficult book to love. As such I can't particularly recommend it, but I wish more writers would do what Phillips does here.
