Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti

The story becomes compelling the longer you listen.

yes

This is one of those fantastic story lines where you simply suspend disbelief (really how could she possibly replace bone with copper tubes???) because you are simply drawn into the charaters' plight. The fact that the story manages to be compelling and horrific at the same time certainly helps keep you listening.

Beautiful, Sad, Memorable

My favorite character would have to be Stenos for his complexity and strangely broken angst filled nature.

What didn't I like! It is one of the real joys of Audiobooks to hear such a great reader not simply read the words of the book but actually embody each character in a different voice. With the constant shifting POV of Mechanique I think this enhanced the experience of the story itself.

Mechanique is beautifully written and beautifully performed. I keep mostly to ebooks and audiobooks nowadays but this is one I'll probably purchase a physical copy to read again, glad to have come to it through this excellent audio version first.

This is a different sort of book. The characters are complex and loveable. The storyline is nonlinear. The setting is unusual and surreal. I enjoyed listening to this audiobook very much. I don't want to give anything away because it's such an unusual book. I've read LOTS of books and LOTS of genres, and if you love a good bedtime story you'll enjoy Mechanique. My only complaint is that it could have been longer - there is so much more I wanted to know!

The story seemed flawed from the onset. Poor character development. Flash forwards and flash backs made an already disjointed story even worse. How this is supposed to be steampunk, I'm not really sure. It had a more supernatural/post apocolyptic twist to it then steam punk.At one point I forgot to turn off my audio player. I came back 15 minutes later and I was actually glad I didn't have to suffer another 15 minutes of that story. About 10 minutes later I decided to not suffer anymore of this horrible story.

The disjointedness of it didn't allow for any story flow.

He did the best he could with what he had.

Sorry if my review is poorly worded. I submitted it from my cellphone.

I really wanted to like this book after reading "Water for Elephants" which was also about a circus and a superb story which I enjoyed it immensely! However, "Mechanique" came across to me as a dark, disjointed story with the characters wandering around angry and waiting to 'do each other in'. I eventually had to stop listening as I got to frustrated and depressed with not knowing the characters and losing the plot as it was not clearly defined by the author. If you like dark depressing books, then this is for you.

I will admit, I only had any curiosity about this book because it seemed to come right on the heels of "The Night Circus", of whose summary it seemed extremely similar to. Coupled with the additional "steampunk" quality it boasted, I was initially convinced that this was nothing more than a cheap shot riding two very popular coat tails.

That may or may not be true of this book, but I can say that the story itself was more unique and interesting than I expected.

The narrator, unfortunately, was awful. I will never listen to anything Scott Aiello narrates again. If I were stumbling across this for the first time again, I'd buy the book, not the audio.

If it had more flow to it, and if the characters were more developed.

I am nuts about circus stuff, and I am interested by the steampunk genre, but this really didn't satisfy either for me. I only liked a couple of the characters and found the story very hard to focus on. I kept thinking I must have missed something and went back to listen, but I hadn't.

I think some of the fault may be given to the book here, but it seemed that he was inconsistent in which voices he was using for which part, and to be honest, I wasn't quite sure why he used particular voices much of the time. I wouldn't avoid another book that I wanted to listen to if he narrated it, though. I would give him another chance.

It had potential. It seemed unique and some of the characters were interesting. Maybe a more agressive editor could have helped the author collect this story into something better to read/listen to.

The writing style of this book reminded me a little bit of the Dreamhunter Duet, in that the actual story is not apparent until the end. Each scene, in the story, is told and then retold from the view of the different characters. So, it took me a little while to catch the rhythm of the story to be able to follow along. Overall, I found the writing to be good. However, the story itself was too bleak and depressing for my taste.

If the story wasn't such a bore.

doubting it.

boredom, tedium, annoyance.

Scott Aiello is a good reader and all, but this story was just tedious to listen to.

I might like it better if i read it...i don't think the performance fit the story so my mind often went astray.

He was fine...just not for this story. These were weird "people" set in a weird time. He sounded too normal...(my opinion)