10.22.2011
the Half-Made World
by Felix Gilman, 479 pgs, hardcover
Book 1 of the Half-Made World duology
Overall Grade: A
Despite its lackluster ending, this one gets a solid A.
The Wild West is such ripe pickings for the steampunk genre, and Gilman makes heavy use of it. The West is dominated by the forces of Gun and Line, where otherworldly spirits seem to inhabit guns, binding their wielders to their bidding, or monstrous steam engines, dominating their stations and enslaving their people as ant-like drones. Into this craziness comes Liv, a newly widowed psychologist from the civilized East, following the request of a mysterious letter to help with war-ravaged patients at the House Dolorous. But one of those patients holds a secret in his addled mind that Gun and Line will do anything to get (and keep the other side from getting). Liv literally gets swept up into an adventure to the edge of the world, the far west, where the world is actually still forming and shifting.
Labels: genre: fiction, genre: steampunk, media: book, series: the Half-Made World
