Pinion (Clockwork Earth)

Lake, Jay

ISBN 10: 0765321866 ISBN 13: 9780765321862

Publisher: Tor Books, 2010

Synopsis

"The delight is in what's seen en route, as Lake has configured his world-dominating empires, one British, the other Chinese, with huge and devoted attention to the last detail. The delight of the next volume--prefigured with unrelenting clarity in Escapement's final pages--should be the discovery that the destination adds up."--Washington Post Book World on EscapementRejoin the Librarian and the Chinese submarine captain, the British sailor, the clockwork man, and the young sorceress who has gone south of the great equatorial wall.  This adventure in Lake€™s Clockwork Earth continues the tale begun in Escapement. "The very cosmology of this world is an enigmatic astonishment, and it underpins every single bit of action and character€¦.Lake has a ball transporting his characters up and down this magnificent world, subjecting them to all sorts of perils and escapes in a wild variety of settings. His three main pro

About this title

About the Author

JAY LAKE lives and works in Portland, Oregon, within sight of an 11,000-foot volcano. He is the author of more than two hundred short stories, four collections, and a chapbook, along with novels from Tor Books, Night Shade Books, and Fairwood Press. Lake is also the co-editor, with Deborah Layne, of the critically-acclaimed Polyphony anthology series from Wheatland Press. In 2004, Lake won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. He has also been a Hugo nominee for his short fiction and a three-time World Fantasy Award nominee for his editing.

Reviews

Starred Review. Political conflicts and philosophical arguments find closure at last in this splendidly baroque whirl of geomancy and Victorian clockwork. Young Paolina Barthes, the gear-minded prodigy who became a target for the empire-building ambitions of rival governments in 2009's Escapement, is on the run, heading south over the Wall that God built to divide the hemispheres and keep the Earth's gear turning through the heavens. As spies and ancient secret societies scramble to find her, Paolina struggles to learn how to control her world-shaking abilities, while her heart pulls her toward Boaz, a golemlike man of brass. Lake wields big themes—magic and religion versus science, free will, colonialism, and a bit of romance—with surprising elegance, and readers will enjoy cherishing the characters and pondering the concepts of this clockpunk world. (Apr.)
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Lake returns to the clockwork Earth of Mainspring (2007) and Escapement (2008) to resume the intertwining stories of Paolina Barthes, the Mask Childress, the Chinese clerk Wang, and Mr. Kitchens. Paolina is traveling south of the Wall into mysterious lands populated by sorcerers, where she hopes to escape the grasping power of the men of the north and learn to use the power of her gleam more wisely. Childress travels aboard a renegade Chinese submarine. Kitchens is on a mission to discover what has transpired with mad Dr. Ottweill’s attempt to drill through the Wall. At the whim of his master, Wang, aboard a ship of condemned men, chases Childress through hostile waters, occasionally aided by a female monk capable of moving invisibly on the ship at sea as well as in great cities. She and Wang are navigating the complex machinations of the secret societies the White Birds and the Silent Order and preventing the worst of a Sino-English war. As before, Lake’s world is multifaceted, fascinating, quite filled with satisfying adventure and intrigue. --Regina Schroeder

Edition details

• Publisher: Tor Books
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0765321866
• ISBN 13: 9780765321862
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352