Clockwork Heart by Dru Pagliassotti

[meganbmoore]

Taya is an Icarus, a courier who travels via a harness with metal wings. She aspires to move up in the ranks and become a politician, but currently performs services for the city of Ondinium. When she saves the lives of an Exalted (aristocrat), Viera, and her son, she becomes involved in the lives of Viera’s cousins, Alister and Cristof. Alister and Cristof both want to change the city and its caste system, but in different (eventually spoilery) ways. Alister, charming and popular, is a politician in the city, and is working on a program to insert into the Great Machine that runs their lives that he hopes will better them. Cristof, meanwhile, has denied his caste status and repairs clocks in the lowest levels of the city, but has many secrets.

The book is billed as fantasy, but its fantasy only in the sense that it’s a reimagined world. There’s no magic to speak of, unless you include the existence of a substance that lets people defy gravity and fly on metal wings. The society is partly based on Roman society (Ondinium is a thinly veiled reference to Londinium, the Roman name for London) but includes elements from other cultures as well. The names follow no real pattern, but fit together well. The technology makes the book largely fit into the steampunk genre, but there are also elements of modern technology mixed in.

And, really, it almost reads like a response to the (legitimate) criticisms of the steampunk genre.

Criticism A: Steampunk is sexist, and primarily about men, with women in “negative” and peripheral roles.

CH: Well, for one thing, the main character, whose narrative is never made secondary to that of the men, even when their plots are central, is a woman. In addition, it’s made prominently clear that the Icarii are pretty evenly split between men and women, the police force allegory includes both men and women, and, like the Icarii, the various programmers are represented by both men and women, and both genders are well developed. The Exalted seem to be primarily patriarchal, but that there are problems with how things are done is an important focus of the book.

Criticism B: Steampunk is racist. It’s always about white people.

CH: Taya, who is of mixed race, is the closest thing to a white person in the book. Well, I suppose there were likely a few other foreigners floating around, but the bulk of the residents of the city are not white. While Pagliassotti doesn’t make a direct allegory that I picked up on, the impression I had is that the closest allegory to the residents (based on references to cheekbones and other facial features and coppery skin) is Indian. In general, Ithink it’s rather like Avatar, where you aren’t drawn a blueprint saying “this is this” (ok, Avatar almost does) but if you read and get “white people,” I wonder about you.

Criticism C: Steampunk is always European, and usually set in London.

CH: The base of the city is a combination of ancient Rome and ancient London, but the end result is not Eurocentric. There are elements of various historical Earth cultures in Ondinium, as well as things Pagliassotti seems to have made up on her own.

Criticism D: Steampunk is classist, and ignores the lower classes, who have miserable, choking-on-steam-and-smoke-and-getting-limbs-caught-in-gears lives, focusing instead on the nifty-shiny-cool bits.

CH: While Pagliassotti doesn’t actually get to “choking-on-steam-and-smoke-and-getting-limbs-caught-in-gears,” the subjects of class and classism are central to the book, and from three very different viewpoints (Taya, Alister, Cristof).
 
Mystery, lots of adventure, lots of action. Interesting, developed characters, both major characters and minor characters, and an engaging but non-intrusive romance. And a three-tiered city where people fly on metal wings.

Comments

[coraa]

Oh, fascinating. I picked it up because I saw it listed as 'steampunk romance' and that seemed right up my alley, and indeed way more up my alley than most steampunk fiction -- but now I think it's going on my short reading list.

(I love the trappings of steampunk, and am dubious about a lot of the actual works. But yeah -- this sounds like it addresses a lot of my issues.)

[meganbmoore]

I love the trappings of steampunk, and am dubious about a lot of the actual works.

Yeah, that's pretty much me and steampunk in a nutshell.