Clockwork Boys

Clocktaur War, Book 1

De: T. Kingfisher

Narrado por: Khristine Hvam

A paladin, an assassin, a forger, and a scholar ride out of town. It's not the start of a joke, but rather an espionage mission with deadly serious stakes. T. Kingfisher's new novel begins the tale of a murderous band of criminals (and a scholar), thrown together in an attempt to unravel the secret of the Clockwork Boys, mechanical soldiers from a neighboring kingdom that promise ruin to the Dowager's city.

If they succeed, rewards and pardons await, but that requires a long journey through enemy territory, directly into the capital. It also requires them to refrain from killing each other along the way! At turns darkly comic and touching, Clockwork Boys puts together a broken group of people trying to make the most of the rest of their lives as they drive forward on their suicide mission.

©2017 Ursula Vernon (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

It’s only part 1, but it’s a good part 1

This is half of a 5 star story. It’s common in fantasy series to have the first book be “assembling the team”, but the expectation was set at the start that there was a quest and that the story resolution required finishing the quest. I enjoy a good series arc but I’ve now listened to this twice and the abrupt ending just as momentum built up caught me off guard both times. There are ways to set expectations and that it wasn’t done properly is the main fault of this novel. Having previously read the rest of the story, I can recommend it, but know that this book is entirely “assemble the team” & “get them to the staging point to start the quest”, the end. You will need the sequel to get to the rest of the story.

That said, the story is engaging, the stakes are high and real, the merry band of misfits has, every one, done something horrible before joining up, but they’re compelling and even likeable and it’s easy to invest in their quest and their personal & team growth.

(Slightly spoilerish list of the bad things done by each: murder for hire, forgery sufficient for treason, murder by dint of demon possession, dismissal of half of humanity as inhuman and unworthy of consideration, and aiding the clockwork boys.
/end spoiler)

The plot kicks along and we learn about the characters’ skills and quirks. They way they treat each other evolves well over time They run into problems on the road and need several tricks to get out of or avoid tight situations. There are horrors, but not the kind that put me off. (I don’t like most horror stories. I don’t have problems with the horror elements in this story.) The weird stuff is, to me, quite clever & weird, instead of the same cookie cutter fantasy elements. Even the more classic elements like demons are handled deftly. The pacing is great too, which is why the abrupt ending is so grating.

Steam: low. Lore than zero because there’s some tension, & references to consensual activities such as adults would think about, rather than ignoring it like lots of fantasy authors do. But the most actual action is a kiss and a cuddle. But there’s something there that could progress and the POV characters think about it.

Narration: I find this narrator incredibly pleasant to listen to. Top tier work. Intonation & feeling match the text, there’s good flow and variety in character voices. The production quality is good & I don’t have to max out my speaker volume to hear the story clearly.

Wonderfully Strange New World

This story is full of unexpected twists and manages to keep the reader/listener engaged and invested in turning the next page or listening to the next chapter. I have been looking for a story that isn’t just a repetition of the same old same old and finally discovered it right here. It’s impossible to guess what might happen next and that is so difficult to pull off in this genre sometimes. It’s an adventure, a mystery, a romance that is not the raison d’etre of the tale, and has an abundance of wonderfully bizarre, but likable, characters and creatures that make their appearances and surprise the reader as much as they do the characters themselves. That’s a refreshing change from the current 95% of newer fantasy available. My one complaint is that it is a bit short and I am hoping that the sequels are as good as I found the first. Trust me, it will start off pretending to be average and suddenly you’ll discover you’ve fallen into a Alice in Wonderland kind of story. But without being that kind of story at all, although there is a short appearance of a talking rabbit. Just get it.

It gnoll my heart

Wonderfully written. But I fell in love with it near the end because of the gnoll.

Wow

Another amazing fantasy from Kingfisher. I’m such a fan of the world building and humor in this book.

very entertaining,

a good listen to on a rainy day. No awkward sex scenes. the voice actor gives each character their own voice.

good trope, great world

great world building in the quest trope. really enjoyed the performance. she has an expressive voice and a noir meets humor delivery

Another Win

Excellent story my the author. Love the world building. Slow burn with character developement. Author not afraid to use very flawed people.

Enjoyable, entertaining adventure

Slate is a forger and thief, Brenner an assassin, Sir Caliban a former knight-champion of the Dreaming God. In that capacity, he killed or exorcised, depending on circumstances, demons who had possessed people or animals. Then he got careless and a demon possessed him,and it was exorcised, but not until after he'd killed eight temple nuns.

They're all condemned criminals, but they've been offered pardons and rewards if they can successfully complete a mission to Anuket City, to find a wayto defeat the Clockwork Boys, giant centaur-like creatures apparently made out of machine parts, who are ravaging the countryside and threatening the kingdom that, however questionable their characters, our three criminals are subjects of.

Slate, possibly because she's the most stable and educated of the three (Brenner may be stable, but not all that educated, and Caliban may be far more educated, but it's not at all clear he's stable), is in charge of this little group. But they're not going to Anuket City alone. They'll have a scholar with them. Learned Edmund is outraged to learn that he's not going to command the mission. He's the one that has the most information about the Clockwork Boys, after all, and the ability read the journal of a scholar who's going missing, if they ever find it and him. Sadly, he's also a nineteen-year-old boy, a dedicat of a the ragingly misogynistic cult of the Many-Armed God, and has no idea how to conduct such an expedition. Learned Edmund is compelled, eventually, to accept this unwelcome piece of reality.

This is in many ways your basic "misfit comrades on a mission." What's different is Kingfisher's skill at drawing interesting, compelling characters. They are all, including Learned Edmund, weirdly likable characters, and for all the varying backgrounds and levels of education, there's a lot of wit, here. In many ways, the most fascinating part of this book are the characters and their interrelationships, and their responses to what they encounter along the way.

This is the first half of the story, but the second half, The Wonder Engine, is also available. I'm looking forward to that.

Highly recommended.

I bought this audiobook.

Great fantasy and different from most!

Looking forward to the rest of the series! Can't help but root for the odd group to accomplish what they set out to do.

Nice story but ended early

The story and characters are engrossing, but it felt like it ended abruptly, as if a long story were split into two books with this one being the prequel. Still I liked enough to buy the next one to see how the story ends.