REVIEW | Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti by Genevieve Valentine

In a post-apocalyptic landscape a circus wanders around the waste from small enclave of life to the next in a never ending journey to entrance audiences with their wonders and grotesqueries. They may only visit a town once in a lifetime, if you're lucky, so get in while you can. Just don't tag along unless you have a strong heart unless you don't have a problem with it being replaced with scrap metal.

Last year Paul Jessup wrote an article for this corner of the web. An article that served as almost a call to action on what he was hoping for out of Steampunk in the future. A Steampunk novel that wasn't just Victorian. That wasn't just all about cogs and steam. That wasn't about colonialism and white people. Well the answer to his mandate has been answered by Valentine with a very dark and melodic first novel that consists of an unforgettable story that stays with you long after you finish the last page. Mechanique will haunt your dreams.

Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti is a novel of disparities. Disparities of time, love, and of what life is and should be. Even of what life could be, but probably shouldn't be.

Life in any circus can be hard. Hard for all the traveling, setup, and performing. But the Tresaulti circus is an entirely different beast. Like none you've seen before.  It is filled with moody characters desiring what someone else has even if that something is another person or a part of a person. Somehow Valentine makes a group of mostly unlikable characters into a family. A family you end up caring quite a bit about. I was surprised how much I came to care for each and every one of them. Even those I loathed and couldn't entirely comprehend.

The pacing and style take quite a few chapters to get a handle on, but all the hard work pays off in this slim volume that is heavy with meaning. We flip back and forth through time seemingly at random that starts with the mention of the death of a character who we only relive through the memories of others.   Each chapter acts almost as a standalone short story as Valentine has gone with her strengths of less is more. Each and every word is important and has reverberations throughout the narrative as the characters search for what comes next.

The Steampunk aspects appear more magical than mechanical, but each and every touch is done thoughtfully and with verve. Sure there are people with mechanical arms and wings, but this story is so much more than Steampunk. Mechanique actually has more in common with New Weird given its horror influences. Fans of early Mieville and VanderMeer will fall in love.

Mechanique is best experienced for yourself rather than reading an analysis. All those that like challenging reads should give this a chance and even a few of you who don't. On it surface you can simply enjoy it for the circus motifs and post-apocalyptic side. For you Steampunk fans this is one of the most original novels you'll ever find around the genre. For those that go deeper you'll be richly rewarded. I give Mechanique 8.5 out of 10 hats. I can't wait to see what Valentine has in store for us next. She is a voice to watch.  Be sure to check out an earlier post I did on the related short story work available online for the Circus Tresaulti.


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Steampunk Month Comes to An End (Month in Review)

REVIEW | The House of Discarded Dreams by Ekaterina Sedia

Ekaterina Sedia, over the course of only a few novels, has assembled a body of work that has continually left me in awe of her creative and daring power. Some authors use mythology to merely accentuate their worlds, while Sedia makes mythology grow and change to her whims in lyrical and poetic ways that make them feel like all her own creation.

If you think you've read it all in Fantasy than think again.  Sedia's latest The House of Discarded Dreams gathers odd mythology from around the world to create one of the most unique novels in Speculative Fiction today. Sedia shuns conventionality for a story that seemingly has no connective tissue to form something more than the sum of all its parts. It is the story of a young woman trying to find herself in a country that doesn't feel like her own. It is a modern melding of old and modern mythology and fears. It is a story of dreams and nightmares coming to life.

The story centers around Vimbai, a college student and daughter of African immigrants. Vimbai is drawn to a house in the sand dunes of New Jersey as an escape from her family as she searches for who she wants to be.  Sedia brings some of her own experiences as an immigrant coming to America and living in New Jersey to the fore, but lots of research shows though as well. Africa has a mythology very unlike the style most Fantasy readers are use to, which makes The House of Discard Dreams a very impactful and original read.

Vimbai moves in with two other people who are given sketchy backgrounds, at best, one of which, Felix, has some sort of black hole in place of his hair and the other, Maya, a bartender in Atlantic City, who is the epitome of distant for much of the novel. Soon after moving in the house begins to change and odd things start to appear along the lines of ghosts, Psychic Energy Babies, and talking crabs and fish all of which barely scratches the surface of the complete and utter strangeness of it all.

Even amid all the originality there are some downside issues. The characters come off as distant and unknowable for too much of the story. What drives the other roommates? Maya's dark closet eventually comes out after much cajoling, but Felix comes off more as window dressing and often gets lost in the background.  Sedia also missed an important scene near the beginning where Vimbai tells her parents that she is moving out as she goes from looking at the house to a couple weeks later living there.  And I wasn't completely satisfied with the explanation on the black hole hair-do or how easily everyone accepts the changes in the house.

As the novel closes a good sense of growth is felt for Vimbai as she discovered the confidence and strength she was always looking for. It is an emotional journey that will leave you perfectly satisfied.  All you fans of Charles De Lint take notice. You've got a new favorite author and their name is Ekaterina Sedia. I give The House of Discarded Dreams 8 out of 10 hats. I can't wait to see how Sedia surprises me next and with Heart of Iron coming later this year it won't be too long.

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Cover Unveiled for The House of Discarded Dreams by Ekaterina Sedia

Vimbai moves into a dilapidated house in the dunes, trying to escape her embarrassing immigrant mother, and discovers that one of her new roommates has a pocket universe instead of hair, there is a psychic energy baby living in the telephone wires, and her dead Zimbabwean grandmother is now doing dishes in the kitchen. When the house gets lost at sea and creatures of African urban legends all but take it over, Vimbai has to turn to horseshoe crabs in the ocean, to ask for their help in getting home to New Jersey.

The House of Discarded Dream is one of those books it feels like I've been talking about forever. Ekaterina Sedia has quickly become one of my favorite Fantasy author as she is will to push things in new and sometimes strange directions.  The cover treatment this time around is gorgeous and steps away from the look of Fantasy books with more of a lit look that works for Sedia. I love the title font as well as the coloring of the imagery. The font is the same used on the recent reissue of The Alchemy of Stone from Prime Books.

The House of Discarded Dream is set for a November publication from Prime Books.

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MISHMASH | Dresden Files RPG, ToC for Running With the Pack, and Free Bacigalupi

Four years into development and Evil Hat Productions has finally announced the impending publication of The Dresden Files RPG.  The RPG will be based off the FATE system which I am not familiar with, but it certainly sounds workable for this world.  The game has now grown into at least two volumes: The Dresden Files RPG: Volume 1 – Your Story and The Dresden Files RPG: Volume 2 – Our World.  Fred Hicks from Evil Hat has this to say:

“Originally, we were planning to do this game in a single volume. As time went on and word count grew…so did the amount of flat-out awesome we knew we had on our hands. And so our game grew out of the confines of one book, into two gorgeous volumes.”

Ryan Macklin, head developer-wrangler of Evil Hat added:

"The thing is jam-packed with great rules for making your campaign & playing all sorts of different beasts and badasses from the Dresdenverse, supported by loads of advice for players & GMs as well as a lot of characters and creatures from the books statted out. (To give you an idea of what we mean by A LOT, Fred got to about the 75% mark on the first pass through layout and saw he already had 460 pages of material. The final combined page count of the two books together could break 600. Over 140 pages of that is our comprehensive tour of the characters of the first ten novels, complete with stats where they’re stattable.)"

A preview of Harry Dresden's character sheet is available here.  Evil Hat is hoping to have pre-orders up in June so be on the lookout, but it seems like you may not  have product in hand until July as they are first releasing it at a convention.  Visit the official site for the game for more details as they are released as they've gone all out on the development details.




Ekaterina Sedia has released the table of contents for her second anthology Running With the Pack, which will be released this May from Prime Books.

INTRODUCTION

WILD RIDE by Carrie Vaughn

SIDE EFFECTS MAY INCLUDE by Steve Duffy

COMPARISON OF EFFICACY RATES FOR SEVEN ANTIPATHETICS AS EMPLOYED AGAINST LYCANTHROPES by Marie Brennan

BEAUTIFUL GELREESH by Jeffrey Ford

SKIN IN THE GAME by Samantha Henderson

BLENDED by C.E. Murphy

LOCKED DOORS by Stephanie Burgis

WERELOVE by Laura Anne Gilman

IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING by Molly Tanser

ROYAL BLOODLINES by Mike Resnick

DIRE WOLF by Genevieve Valentine

TAKE BACK THE NIGHT by Lawrence Schimmel

MONGREL by Maria Snyder

DEADFALL by Karen Everson

RED RIDING HOOD'S CHILD by N.K. Jemisin

ARE YOU A VAMPIRE OR A GOBLIN? by Geoffrey Goodwin

THE PACK AND THE PICKUP ARTIST by Mike Brotherton

THE GARDEN, THE MOON, THE WALL by Amanda Downum

BLAMED FOR TRYING TO LIVE by Jesse Bullington

THE BARONY AT RODAL by Peter Bell

INSIDE OUT by Erzbet Yellowboy

GESTELLA by Susan Palwick

Stories by Jesse Bullington, N.K. Jemisin, and Amanda Downum definitely move this collection up on my list. Also, I love the title of Geoffrey Goodwin's story Are You a Vampire or a Goblin?

iO9 in conjunction with Night Shade Press is giving away the ebook version of Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl, which keeps garnering praise left and right.  So if you haven't picked it up yet now is your chance to grab it for free.  This looks to be a limited time offer to coincide with iO9's book club event for The Windup Girl, so put a request in while you can.

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