Kim Miller
If we were to construct a Venn Diagram of genres that populate this book it would include Fantasy, Steampunk, SF, Grunge, Weird, and a whole lot of descriptive stuff like Squalid, Dysfunctional, Abusive, and Weird again. The story is well put together, but these themes of disgust drag the whole thing down into the mire.
The book starts with a traveler entering a city. The traveler is not detailed but the city is. It's filthy, stinking of sewerage, squalid, worn down and worn out, and there's no escape from these putrescences. (Also, the author uses lots of words like this. Some of them sound made up but aren't.)
We meet the main character, Isaac, a scientist working in his backstreet lab doing some mysterious stuff. A Garuda, a half bird half man creature tracks him down. He wants to fly again but his wings have been cut off. So the journey to finding flight begins. Along the way there are other fantasmagorical creatures, aliens but not interplanerary aliens, just inhabitants of different continents on this weird world. One with a scarab head, one who seems made of water, others augmented with machinery in place of limbs, and zoo keeps surprising us.
Isaac sees the flight solution to involve his idea of a 'crisis engine'. Throw someone off a building and it puts them in crisis. If he can harness that 'crisis energy' he can feed it back to the falling man to power flight. Easy peasy.
Not so fast, Isaac, First you have to find out what this strange caterpillar with grow into. And then you have to find out how to capture the winged monster that sucks life from people. And then you have to work out how to save the city when it releases others of its kind. And then you have to work out how to stop that monster AI that built itself on the junk heap from taking over your crisis engine. And then you have to escape the twin forces of the city militia and the drug dealer you've inadvertently wronged. Oh, and don't forget you lover is caught up in all this.
OK, that's enough of the story. What happens towards the end is that the author throws the whole cast of characters into a series of moral dilemmas. The whole 'these are the good guys' theme gets turned on its head. It's as if the rotten stinking mess of the city has risen up to pollute the motivations and actions of the characters, and nobody gets off easy. We walk away, as do they, thinking, "Well, that was a punch in the guts."
If we were to construct a Venn Diagram of genres that populate this book it would include Fantasy, Steampunk, SF, Grunge, Weird, and a whole lot of descriptive stuff like Squalid, Dysfunctional, Abusive, and Weird again. The story is well put together, but these themes of disgust drag the whole thing down into the mire.
The book starts with a traveler entering a city. The traveler is not detailed but the city is. It's filthy, stinking of sewerage, squalid, worn down and worn out, and there's no escape from these putrescences. (Also, the author uses lots of words like this. Some of them sound made up but aren't.)
We meet the main character, Isaac, a scientist working in his backstreet lab doing some mysterious stuff. A Garuda, a half bird half man creature tracks him down. He wants to fly again but his wings have been cut off. So the journey to finding flight begins. Along the way there are other fantasmagorical creatures, aliens but not interplanerary aliens, just inhabitants of different continents on this weird world. One with a scarab head, one who seems made of water, others augmented with machinery in place of limbs, and zoo keeps surprising us.
Isaac sees the flight solution to involve his idea of a 'crisis engine'. Throw someone off a building and it puts them in crisis. If he can harness that 'crisis energy' he can feed it back to the falling man to power flight. Easy peasy.
Not so fast, Isaac, First you have to find out what this strange caterpillar with grow into. And then you have to find out how to capture the winged monster that sucks life from people. And then you have to work out how to save the city when it releases others of its kind. And then you have to work out how to stop that monster AI that built itself on the junk heap from taking over your crisis engine. And then you have to escape the twin forces of the city militia and the drug dealer you've inadvertently wronged. Oh, and don't forget you lover is caught up in all this.
OK, that's enough of the story. What happens towards the end is that the author throws the whole cast of characters into a series of moral dilemmas. The whole 'these are the good guys' theme gets turned on its head. It's as if the rotten stinking mess of the city has risen up to pollute the motivations and actions of the characters, and nobody gets off easy. We walk away, as do they, thinking, "Well, that was a punch in the guts."