Name: Infernal Devices
Rating: 3.75 (4 reviews)
ISBN: 9780857660978

K. W. Jeter

George Dower, a 19th-century London clock maker, is hired to repair a peculiar device whose function is unknown to him, and finds himself defamed by a strange and mysterious double. Reissue.

Infernal Devices

M. Sosotris

Came across this in a bookstore and, after seeing online that it's author was the one who coined the term "Steampunk," decided to give it a go.

Overall, while this was a bewildering read, it does all come together in the end, making it an ultimately satisfying reading experience. If you liked The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde, you'd be most prepared for the format of this novel: a mounting collection of odd events culminating in a beautiful infodump near the end in which everything neatly falls together. The downside of this is that the confusing, unexplained events of the novel try the reader's patience for the majority of the novel's read time. The upside is that, when they are explained and the pieces crash together with satisfying neatness, the reader is well rewarded for their patience.

While some have criticized the narrator for being bland and passive, I quite liked him. He's very much Carroll's Alice, but with a nihilistic mistrust of the world and its denizens. He cares for people about as much as he cares for his father's clockwork creations. This allows Jeter to maintain the persistent darkly humorous tone throughout, keeping things playful and almost Monty-Python-esque.

I would have liked more, but that may just be because books nowadays are often big enough to build bunkers with. A fun, breezy, silly novel that will make a dreary evening less so, provided one is not expecting deep, serious characters. Read this as a comedic novel for maximum enjoyment.

I would like to add, though, that the numerous typesetting errors are very distracting. Missing or incorrectly placed punctuation, incorrect words, and misspelled words are oddly abundant and sort of spoiled the reading experience at times, causing me to have to reread passages several times. Not cool.

Rebecca C Wright

Michael Cowell

George Dower, a nineteenth century London clock maker, is hired to repair a peculiar device whose function is unknown to him, and finds himself defamed by a strange and mysterious double

Infernal Devices

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