Rec'd via Amazon.com's Vine Program.
PAPERBACK ARC.

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Book Description
Release Date: March 20, 2012
From the acclaimed author of The Gone-Away World, blistering gangster noir meets howling absurdist comedy as the forces of good square off against the forces of evil, and only an unassuming clockwork repairman and an octogenarian former superspy can save the world from total destruction.

Joe Spork spends his days fixing antique clocks. The son of infamous London criminal Mathew “Tommy Gun” Spork, he has turned his back on his family’s mobster history and aims to live a quiet life. That orderly existence is suddenly upended when Joe activates a particularly unusual clockwork mechanism. His client, Edie Banister, is more than the kindly old lady she appears to be—she’s a retired international secret agent. And the device? It’s a 1950s doomsday machine. Having triggered it, Joe now faces the wrath of both the British government and a diabolical South Asian dictator who is also Edie’s old arch-nemesis. On the upside, Joe’s got a girl: a bold receptionist named Polly whose smarts, savvy and sex appeal may be just what he needs. With Joe’s once-quiet world suddenly overrun by mad monks, psychopathic serial killers, scientific geniuses and threats to the future of conscious life in the universe, he realizes that the only way to survive is to muster the courage to fight, help Edie complete a mission she abandoned years ago and pick up his father’s old gun . . .

Started listening to an audio version of this book today.

Finished today.


His father was a legend of the London underworld, an infamous criminal called “Tommy Gun” Spork. But Joe Spork is a quiet, average sort of guy. Instead of following in his father’s footsteps, Joe specializes in clockwork repair, with a special interest in Victorian era automata. One of his clients, a sweet but rather dotty old lady, gives him a particularly unusual clockwork device, which sets off a doomsday device from the 1950s. It doesn’t matter that Joe didn’t mean to trigger the end of the world. The British government wants him locked up now for terrorism. His client, it turns out, is a retired secret agent who has spent years preventing a South Asian dictator from getting his hands on the doomsday machine and destroying the world. But now that the clock is ticking and Joe’s life has been turned upside down, it’s up to him to somehow save the world.

This densely-packed novel hits the ground running during the first couple of chapters, and never really lets up. It is exciting and energetic, full of vim and vigor – a thriller of the first rate. Not a thriller in the James Patterson/Dan Brown style, of course. It is as if the worlds created by Neil Gaiman slam-crashed into the absurdity of Christopher Moore and fused into a mutant behemoth of a novel. (At over 550 pages, it’s a hefty tome.) There are killer clockwork bees, secret agents, crazy killer monks, sexy femme fatales, and, of course, Armageddon just around the corner.

When I first began the book, I thought it was some sort of dystopian future or alternate universe in which the world had morphed into a Neo-Victorian dream of steam-powered clockwork. Nope. It’s our world, and the initially steampunk elements stem more from Joe’s specific line of work than London around him. But there’s an appreciation for the handmade and the beautiful in a maker’s craft that I think is integral to the whole steampunk movement, so it still seems very much a steampunk novel. (How many times can I say ‘steampunk’ in a paragraph?)

In the book, there’s an order of monks called the Ruskinites, who seek evidence of the divine in the details of human labor. They’re artisans, but over the decades they eventually evolve into something far more sinister when a charismatic but dangerous man becomes the leader of the order. I thought this was a cool sort of religious order – useful and meditative – but their path shows how dangerous such an organization can be when it falls into the wrong hands.

This is a book with complicated characters and intricate connections built up over generations. It’s difficult to classify into a genre, so I won’t even try. It was a fantastic book, though. I wish I could read it for the first time again.

adding to the Otherworldly Bookbox!

This book came home with The Otherworldly Bookbox.

Joe Spork's father was a criminal mastermind, king of a shadowy underworld. Joe has fought hard to disconnect himself from that past, concentrating on his clock shop, but when I friend brings in a strange item, hoping he can repair it, it is the beginning of a series of events that will throw Joe onto the world's stage, desperately hoping to save the world from a secret war machine unleashed by a mad man, and his knowledge of his father's trade may be the only way he can win.

This book was hard to get into. It reminded me of Bruce Sterling and William Gibson's book The Difference Engine. The very stylized writing and huge cast of characters, many of whom it is not clear how big a role they will ultimately play, meant that several times I was debating putting it down. Yet, the interesting plot kept drawing me back in, and soon I was so invested in the characters that putting the book down was no longer an option.

One thing I loved was Edie's character. An arguably genderqueer lesbian secret agent who is primarily portrayed as a tough-as-nails old lady isn't a type of character we see very often. She's smart, sarcastic, funny and one of the main reasons I kept going in the beginning of this book.

This book is headed for adventures in the LGBTQ+ Bookbox

Will release soon.

Passing along in LGBTQ+ bookbox. Enjoy!

Taken from emmejo's LGBTQ+ box with thanks.

This is a big brick of an ARC, but it looks like it's well-recommended, so I'll give it a try.

I was hoping to read this book, eventually, but I need to downsize drastically so it will be looking for a new reader. Happy travels, book!

Donated to the Friends of the Library.

Released for BOOKWORMINUSALL's Mother's Day challenge.

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