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rocky41_7Another book I got off a queer fantasy recommendations list. And, unfortunately, a disappointment. I kept waiting to sink into this plot, but I never did. I never felt the urgency of any of the things that were happening and it remained dull the entire time I was reading it. This is a rare did not finish for me—I got a little more than halfway through when I realized I just didn't care what happened next.
The description for The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley is:
1883. Thaniel Steepleton returns home to his tiny London apartment to find a gold pocket watch on his pillow. Six months later, the mysterious timepiece saves his life, drawing him away from a blast that destroys Scotland Yard. At last, he goes in search of its maker, Keita Mori, a kind, lonely immigrant from Japan. Although Mori seems harmless, a chain of unexplainable events soon suggests he must be hiding something. When Grace Carrow, an Oxford physicist, unwittingly interferes, Thaniel is torn between opposing loyalties
The description for The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley is:
1883. Thaniel Steepleton returns home to his tiny London apartment to find a gold pocket watch on his pillow. Six months later, the mysterious timepiece saves his life, drawing him away from a blast that destroys Scotland Yard. At last, he goes in search of its maker, Keita Mori, a kind, lonely immigrant from Japan. Although Mori seems harmless, a chain of unexplainable events soon suggests he must be hiding something. When Grace Carrow, an Oxford physicist, unwittingly interferes, Thaniel is torn between opposing loyalties
I don't think the multiple POVs did this book any favors. Grace feels entirely irrelevant and the book was too boring for me to want to find out how and if she eventually connects to the rest of the plot. The one random flashback to Mori in Japan felt similarly irrelevant, like the author couldn't find a way to express Mori's personality and background without resorting to a discombobulated flashback.
I did enjoy the characters—I thought it was particularly bold and realistic for Pulley to include Grace, a woman pushing back against the sexism of her time while also expressing misogynistic views herself (though, regrettably, she is the ONLY woman in the story, which doesn't look great on the feminism front)—but I never much cared about any of them.
Maybe this book gets good in the end, but I've given enough of my time to it already.
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