metaphorosis's review
3.0
2.5 stars - Metaphorosis Reviews
Rivka Stout, a recent transplant to Tamarania, is adjusting to life in her grandmother's house, and its strict social requirements. When she encounters a cruel laboratory run by a cold-hearted businessman, she vows to set its tortured captives free with the help of her chance companion the self-centered Tatiana. A close tie-in to the Clockwork Dagger series.
I'm a strong believer that artists should be judged on merit - on product, not personality. We're all human, though, and information seeps in despite what we might like. I 'met' a well-known SFF writer on a bulletin board, for example, and found him to be a thorough-going jerk. It's taken all the joy out of reading his generally light-hearted books.
My experience with Beth Cato has gone in the other direction. I first noticed her name when we shared a table of contents, and after that, I felt she came across as a really nice person. When her book Clockwork Dagger came out, I wanted to pick it up , but it didn't sound like my kind of thing. When I saw Wings of Sorrow and Bone available for free, I snapped that up instead.
I'm sorry to say I was right; it's not my kind of thing. The plot is nice (animal friendly), and Cato includes a plug for pet adoption at the end - things that are dear to my heart, and a reinforcement of the whole niceness idea. I wanted to like the book. But I didn't. It's not bad, but it's not novel or exciting, either. The prose is workable, but the plot feels very 'by the numbers'. Even from a young adult book, which this clearly is, I expect a little more subtlety and depth. Here, almost every move, every decision, felt programmed and formulaic. A pinch of element A, a dash of element b, add situation C, stir thoroughly.
It doesn't help that the story is so clearly told in the shadow of a larger story, which does in fact turn out to be Clockwork Dagger. Maybe they're better read in the other order. Maybe not; the story has other flaws, even if you know all the characters it so frequently mentions. More than anything, this reads like an awkward tie-in, interesting only to devoted fans of the main work. In places, there's no more than a quick, summary stab at motivations. The protagonist, teenaged Rivka, sees evil, and immediately assumes it's her personal responsibility to fix it. That's definitely how the formula works, but it works best when there's at least a fig leaf for why.
While the setup is interesting, the prose is clumsy in places. Secondary characters are thin, verging on caricature. In short, it's just not convincing. I still think Cato seems like a very nice person, but I'm afraid her writing isn't to my taste.
This is a pleasant, animal-welfare oriented story, undermined by a reliance on formula. If you're already a Clockwork Dagger fan, you'll undoubtedly like this closely related story. If you're not, I recommend you start there, not here.
Rivka Stout, a recent transplant to Tamarania, is adjusting to life in her grandmother's house, and its strict social requirements. When she encounters a cruel laboratory run by a cold-hearted businessman, she vows to set its tortured captives free with the help of her chance companion the self-centered Tatiana. A close tie-in to the Clockwork Dagger series.
I'm a strong believer that artists should be judged on merit - on product, not personality. We're all human, though, and information seeps in despite what we might like. I 'met' a well-known SFF writer on a bulletin board, for example, and found him to be a thorough-going jerk. It's taken all the joy out of reading his generally light-hearted books.
My experience with Beth Cato has gone in the other direction. I first noticed her name when we shared a table of contents, and after that, I felt she came across as a really nice person. When her book Clockwork Dagger came out, I wanted to pick it up , but it didn't sound like my kind of thing. When I saw Wings of Sorrow and Bone available for free, I snapped that up instead.
I'm sorry to say I was right; it's not my kind of thing. The plot is nice (animal friendly), and Cato includes a plug for pet adoption at the end - things that are dear to my heart, and a reinforcement of the whole niceness idea. I wanted to like the book. But I didn't. It's not bad, but it's not novel or exciting, either. The prose is workable, but the plot feels very 'by the numbers'. Even from a young adult book, which this clearly is, I expect a little more subtlety and depth. Here, almost every move, every decision, felt programmed and formulaic. A pinch of element A, a dash of element b, add situation C, stir thoroughly.
It doesn't help that the story is so clearly told in the shadow of a larger story, which does in fact turn out to be Clockwork Dagger. Maybe they're better read in the other order. Maybe not; the story has other flaws, even if you know all the characters it so frequently mentions. More than anything, this reads like an awkward tie-in, interesting only to devoted fans of the main work. In places, there's no more than a quick, summary stab at motivations. The protagonist, teenaged Rivka, sees evil, and immediately assumes it's her personal responsibility to fix it. That's definitely how the formula works, but it works best when there's at least a fig leaf for why.
While the setup is interesting, the prose is clumsy in places. Secondary characters are thin, verging on caricature. In short, it's just not convincing. I still think Cato seems like a very nice person, but I'm afraid her writing isn't to my taste.
This is a pleasant, animal-welfare oriented story, undermined by a reliance on formula. If you're already a Clockwork Dagger fan, you'll undoubtedly like this closely related story. If you're not, I recommend you start there, not here.
vasha's review
2.5
A steampunk/gaslight fantasy of manners. The setting is a country called Tamarania, where the population is dark-skinned, and its war-torn neighbor Caskentia. It’s too bad that the author chose to populate this potentially original setting with characters bearing English surnames like “Stout” and “Cody” and strictly following English Victorian social rituals down to details like tea. There seems to be no reason for it except that, well, that’s steampunk, right? (Ignoring various authors’ recent attempts to broaden the social world of steampunk.) The most interesting part of the setting is the intersection between tech and magic; there are healers called “medicians” who draw on the aid of a goddess, and they can integrate mechanism and flesh. The main conflict of the story concerns the magi-mechanical creation of intelligent beings called gremlins. A teenage would-be mechanist named Rivka, who is uneasy in Tamaranian social circles because of her harelip and her unrefined upbringing, befriends a much more privileged (and self-centered) girl named Tatiana, and together they go on a crusade to end the mistreatment of gremlins, with the help of Broderick, an apprentice medician who is mistreated by his master. It would hardly be a spoiler to reveal that triumphs are scored, growing up and gaining confidence happens, and everyone except the bad guys gets what they want. One unexpected and welcome deviation from the standard course of such stories is that
Rating: middling.
Spoiler
although Rivka becomes good friends with Broderick, she does not fall in love with him or anyone.Rating: middling.
shays's review
3.0
The world Cato developed in the Clockwork Dagger duology blends magic and science in unique and imaginative ways, but Wings of Sorrow and Bone deals with one of the more disturbing applications of this unusual mix. In Tamarania, a nation that largely reveres science and disdains magic, the politician Mr. Cody combines the two to create chimeras, unnatural creatures forged together from mechanical components and living parts taken from gremlins. read more
dkoboldt's review
4.0
I love the Victorian/steampunk setting of Cato's Clockwork Dagger universe, and this story was a fun read.
brookenomicon's review
4.0
3.5*
I haven't read the other Clockwork Dagger novels or novellas so I was a little lost with some in-story references (my own fault I guess), but otherwise a fun little read with a happy ending. my only real complaint is that it wasn't developed into a longer story.
I haven't read the other Clockwork Dagger novels or novellas so I was a little lost with some in-story references (my own fault I guess), but otherwise a fun little read with a happy ending. my only real complaint is that it wasn't developed into a longer story.
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