It was recommended to me by fellow China Mieville fans. I've just begun, but I've must say, the first two lines have me hooked already.
"Midnight in the golem factory. Sweat and clay and blisters."
Here's a longer review.
"From Publishers Weekly
Mixing the fantastic with the historical, Irvine (A Scattering of Jade) shows that heroism is as likely in the factory as on the battlefield in this novel set in WWII-era Detroit. Jared Cleaves, unable to serve in the armed forces due to a childhood hand injury, becomes entangled with factory politics and military espionage. Selected by the Office of Esoteric Investigation to work on the Ford golem production line (the "Frankenline"), Jared remains unsatisfied with his contribution to the war. Looking to do more, he falls into a complicated series of plots to unearth a supernatural power trapped below Detroit. Drawing his supernatural elements from folklore, Irvine convincingly imagines a world in which sabotage is as likely to be caused by imps as by German agents—and makes the 1943 Detroit race riot a scarier monster than any of the fantasy creatures stalking the city's streets.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved."
1 comment:
Barely 24 hours later and I'm halfway through. This is turning into one of the better books I've read in a while. Mieville fans will definitely like this book.
Here's a little thing that impressed me. I'm gorwing tired of heroes that have left their family and friends to embark on adventure. Or the orphaned child with the mysterious but grand parentage. The hero who looses his wife/parents/family/dog/jar of peanut butter to some incident that forever marks him.
Jared Cleaves, who as of yet isn't really a hero, has a wife, has a marriage that after a handful of years seems to be loosing its bloom, has a two year old daughter that he loves dearly, in-laws that don't really like him, but don't hate him either, parents with whom he has a fractured, but comfortable relationship.
It's just nice to see a take like this. It takes the terrific believably mundane.
I have this small tingling fear that somehow this book is going to loose it. That it's going to take a turn for the terrible. It's had such a strong start and has just sucked me in. I'm worried that it's going to betray me before it's done. You can thank "the great and secret show" for that sort of skepticism.
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