szeglin's review
5.0
What a fun, fantastic book! Highly recommended for fans of history, alternate history, robots, or photo manipulation. By the time I finished this, I was half-convinced there really had been a Boilerplate. As I worked through the book, I received a touchup on my knowledge of late 19th and early 20th American history. The text and illustrations and photographs conveyed real historical information with a bit of robotic whimsy. I'll definitely be cracking Boilerplate open again in the future.
rabbithero's review
3.0
An interesting exercise, if a bit bloated. At times, the level of detail Guinan and Bennett deploy is distracting- there is TOO much detail that the pages become exhausting, and a lot of the information provided about Boilerplate itself is identical, with only the setting changed. Still, it's a fun attempt at creating a faux- history, which is something I've not often seen done in this manner. There's a lot of interesting history on display here, and the angle of presenting it through the lens of a mechanical man is neat, but overall it feels a little lifeless. The characters of Archie and Lily Campion are almost stock characters, lacking in any notable quirks or characteristics that would make them uniquely human. Being that Boilerplate itself is devoid of personality (I actually emailed the author to ask if Boikerplate could actually speak, as the book never explains), the Campions are the thread that ties this narrative together, and other than the fact that they know a lot of famous people, they both are sort of...generically progressive, which smacks of not wanting to make your hero a bad guy.
Fine, but not something I'd return to.
Fine, but not something I'd return to.
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