The Mechanical

The Alchemy Wars

By: Ian Tregillis

Narrated by: Chris Kayser

Length: 15 hrs and 45 mins

Publisher's summary

From "a major new talent" (George R. R. Martin) comes an epic speculative novel of revolution, adventure, and the struggle for free will set in a world that might have been, of mechanical men and alchemical dreams.

My name is Jax.

That is the name granted to me by my human masters.

I am a slave.

But I shall be free.

©2015 Ian Tregillis (P)2014 Hachette Audio

Violence Abounds, Ending is Unsatisfying

This book is pretty good, kept me interested for most of it. however, it is definitely the first book in a series, so it ends a bit abruptly.

Spoiler below.

I found myself repeatedly wondering why Jax didn't use his freedom maker more often. We discover early on that it can free others, so why not use it on anyone who discovers that he's a rogue? Most frustrating part of the book.

New steampunk convert

After being more or less ambivalent about the subgenre for years, this book has brought me around. I'm a sucker for stories with robot protagonists, so I gave this a shot and was not disappointed. Tregillis has made a whole alternate history for Europe and North America rather than just stick some superficial cogs and waistcoats on and call it a day. The world building never bogs down the plot, which is one of the more exciting thrillers I've read recently.

slow star but worth it

The start i found to be abit slow, but it quiclky picked the pace of intruductions

The story was fascinating

Where does The Mechanical rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Very creative alternative history. I loved the story and the way the author handled switching points of view. I did not enjoy the narrator and wish it had been read by someone more engaging.

A beautifully written work

A supremely beautiful novel with so many horrific implications. I'll be waiting impatiently for the next installment.

A world of hurt

Non stop action. Brutal agony all around. Tregillis must live in a world of nastiness steeped in pain. This certainly emphasized the alter reality of the novel. Kaysers narration of the mechanical and his on purpose mispronunciations also used to great effect.

First-rate world- and character-building

I couldn’t stop marveling at the incredible world that Tregillis has created for this novel. The setting is our current world, I am guessing the 1920s. However, in the world of this book, England never became a superpower, never colonized North America (or anywhere else, evidently). Rather, the Dutch are the dominant European power, opposed only by a pale remnant of the French monarchy living in exile in Marseille-in-the-West (which we would know as Montreal).

One thing I greatly appreciated was the subtle and gradual manner in which this alternate history is revealed. Having attempted to listen to The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu immediately prior to picking up The Mechanical, I couldn’t help comparing the writing styles of the two authors. Liu’s book felt like I was reading the litany of ancestors from the Bible while simultaneously being force-fed a master’s thesis on the history of obscure Chinese dynasties—all of it made up! I quit Grace of Kings after just one hour because it was so boring.

The Mechanical was a completely different experience. Rather than bore his readers with page after page of background on the world he has imagined, Tregillis reveals small tidbits of information here and there, always leaving us wanting more. One way this is done is via short quotes from made-up reference texts, such as:

“See Cook [op.cit.] for a discussion of Huygens’s unusual wartime visit to Cambridge and the Royal Society. His philosophical contretemps with Isaac Newton in 1675 (referenced in Society minutes as “The Great Corpuscular Debate”) would mark the last significant intellectual discourse between England and the continent prior to the chaos of the Interregnum and the Annexation . . . Some Newton biographers [Winchester (1867), &c] indicate Huygens may have used his sojourn in Cambridge to access Newton’s alchemical journals and that key insights derived thusly may have been instrumental to Huygens’s monumental breakthrough. However, cf. Hooft [1909] and references therein for a critique of the forensic alchemy underlying this assertion. From Freeman, Thomas S., A History of the Pre-Annexation England from Hastings to the Glorious Revolution, 3 Vols. New Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1918.”

Another huge difference between the two books is that The Grace of Kings has virtually no female characters, while The Mechanical features an amazing female protagonist who begins the story as the Tallyrand for the King of France in exile. In this role she seduces, tortures and makes decisions that impact the lives of, well, of practically everyone in New France.

“Oh, for crying out loud," she said. "Were you fools any more chivalrous I'd surely swoon on the spot and damage my uterus.”

The Tallyrand, along with the other two main characters—the Mechanical Jax and Father Vissers—each have character arcs that take them 180 degrees from where they begin to where they end up. Vissers begins the book as a French-sympathizing Catholic priest masquerading as a Protestant minister. His life journey allows Tregillis to examine the religious turmoil and consequences of Dutch hegemony and reliance on the slave labor of the Clakkers. Jax’s story brings up the slave’s point of view and also questions of free will.

I have to give a shout out to the nice touches of steampunk that dot the story without overpowering it. For instance, here’s a description of a stained-glass window:

“Raindrops misted the Ridderzal’s immense rosette window. Water dripped from the architectural tracery that turned the window into a stained glass cog. It streaked the colored panes of oculi and quatrefoils depicting the empire’s arms: a rosy cross surrounded by the arms of the great families all girded by the teeth of the universal cog.”

Which brings me to another wonderful aspect of Tregillis’s writing: he uses sounds and smells to great effect.

“The Stemwinders made the most bizarre ratcheting sound, like the stripping of gears combined with the metallic whine of an overstressed steel cable.”

“The wind fluttering the pennants atop the outer keep and teasing Berenice’s hair carried the loamy smell of damp earth, the fresh scent of the river, and, even now, a ghostly chemical astringency. The miasma wafted from the battlefield.”

“The clockwork men and women fated to maneuver the oars twenty-four hours per day until the ship reached its destination had turned their silent voices to song as they bent their backs to row. They sang not in any human language but in the secret language of the mechanicals. A shanty sung in the click-tick-click of clockwork bodies, the crash of tapped feet, the clatter of metal hands gripping banded wooden spars.”

Also cannot end this review without saying that Tregillis writes hands-down the best swearing ever sworn by any characters in literature. Really made me laugh every time one of the characters let rip another tirade of blue. Here’s one of my favorites:

“You greasy shit stain on a diseased elk’s warty asshole.”

[I listened to this as an audio book excellently read by Chris Kayser.]

A riveting ride

Once again, the abundant talent of Ian is apparent. He's whisked me away to an alternate and frightening history and given me a key hole to glimpse at a living breathing world. Questions of free will land permanence. Espionage and intrigue. Love and self-sacrifice. It all makes for an enjoyable ride

Couldn’t stop listening!

Could barely make time for sleep and work. Compelling and suspenseful! Deep dive into the meaning of free will

Better when he is not *earnestly* overwriting

This was OK. I enjoyed "Something more than night" that was just a full of high-falutin' purple prose, but where the ridiculous overwriting was meant in fun.

In this book, the verdigris-encrusted phrasing is still here, but it's all high-falutin' philosophical themes of cartesian dualism explored through characters getting tortured to death. If that's what you want, you may as well read Peter Watts' Echopraxia and at least have a dose of hard science to give the narrative contemporary relevance. Having the same ideas explored with a deliberately non-scientific steampunk setting gives the entire thing an sadistic overtone, in which you can't even hide behind educational benefit to justify your complicity in the whole thing.

Still, it has cool robots with glowing heads, and is the first book I've ever read that actually made Spinoza sound interesting, so that's a thing I guess.