The Wonder Engine

A large part of fantasy novels is not really the destination, but the journey. The camaraderie that builds among a troop of characters as they travel to their destination, but what happens once they have arrived? In T Kingfisher’s Clockwork Boys four mismatched social pariahs set out to survive the journey to Anuket City and investigate and destroy the origins of the Clockwork Boys. In The Wonder Engine we find out what they can do now they have arrived.

Slate finds herself back in the city she fled some years earlier, but this time she has a fallen knight, a cutthroat, a woman-shy academic, and a badger-like creature as company. They have to lay low, whilst also discovering what is happening within the Clockwork District that is churning out machines. Easier said than done when you are wanted by the biggest crime lord in the city.

The first outing for Slate and co was a joyous book, as joyous as low fantasy can get. Yes, the heroes are not particularly nice people, and they are slaves to a flesh eating tattoo that forces them to stay on mission lest it eat their arm, but they had each other. By the end of the book the bickering had not ended, but there was a trust and a respect among these few. They never thought they would survive, but they did.

Wonder is that slightly awkward second album as they find themselves in Anuket City ready to discovery and destroy what is making the Clockwork Boys. Whilst book one started in one place. A large portion of the story is told on the road as the crew are involved in misadventure after misadventure, this gave the book momentum. Book two does not quite have this momentum.

Instead of moving along a road, large parts of the novel are launched from an Inn, we learn a lot about the city, and more about our heroes. Perhaps too much. There was a sort of love triangle between Slate, the Knight Caliban, and the assassin Brenner, by book’s end this was mostly Slate and Caliban mooning over one another. This happens a lot in Wonder, insipidly so at times, dominating sections of the book, that could have been action orientated.

When the action does hot up, the book is as fun as the first. The final act is particularly entertaining. Here the threads that have been placed through the two novels come together in a satisfactory manner. Some of the joy of the first book is lost in the noodling of the two leads. There is still a solid work of low fantasy hidden away here, the world of the badger like Gnoles is particularly interesting, there was just too much time spent on the development of a love affair, and not enough focus on the mission. For fantasy fans who enjoy the juxtaposition of violent low fantasy, with plenty of will they/won’t they romance, there is a fun book here.