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Clockworld: The Iron City
- Narrated by: Luke Hannafin
- Length: 12 hrs and 31 mins
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Clockworld: The Iron City
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Summary
The Iron City has stood for thousands of years, but now, dark forces move within her metal walls to bring down her royal family and subjugate her people. Princess Aldreia, heir to the throne, must join with the peasant tunnel-runner mouse to battle against the threats against her city and protect her birthright!
From the darkest cellars of the city Underworks to the skies around its tiers, the battle for the Iron City has begun!
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What listeners say about Clockworld: The Iron City
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Witcher
- 22-05-19
A good steampunk novel.
Disclaimer: I was gifted a copy of the audio book by Ben Myatt. No strings were attached to this gift and this review is what I genuinely feel about the book. This review appeared on Reddit first.
This is not a book I would have picked by myself. The blurb contain way too many tropes that I loath in fantasy: a young princess trying to save her kingdom, a young downtrodden class with special abilities to save the world, and thousands of years old societies…
Would I have missed on a good book? Yes, I would have. I like the book.
The book is very much post apocalypse steampunk, starting fairly light and slowly moving into darker waters. Some of the scenes, while not going into much details of what is happening, are quiet harrowing.
All the characters are engaging, well fleshed out, and develop in interesting and unexpected ways. While some romantic parts felt a little wooden, some were really well executed and nicely pervert tropes. Characters' idiosyncrasies are such that they are all easily imagined and vivid. I was a little disappointed that the main character did not use their old skill to solve a problem, instead relying on a newly acquired one but the story does not suffer for it.
A refreshing and well executed aspect of the plot is that research, and reasoning feature prominently: the characters research, reason, and extrapolate based on what information they can gather, not on exposition after finding a McGuffin. There is even nice foreshadowing in there… Since this is spoiler free, I cannot say more. It is refreshing to see scholars actually do their job and not be a vehicle for plot dumping.
The setting is slowly revealed through the characters' journey, and there are no giant info dump. The Iron City feels alive, a character in its own right, slowly revealing its secrets and purpose. It is easy to imagine the different aspects of it and how people live there.
Oh, and the book has air ships… What can go wrong with airships? Nothing, that's what! ☺
There are weaknesses in the book: The bad guys are so bad, whatever happens to them is justifiable and fair. And the good guys never over step. The antagonists' motivations are not really well explored past being fanatically power hungry. The time frame of the plot is very short for everything that happens there and some of the characters do adjust to utterly new situations way faster than I think they should. The criminal underworld feels a little too "noble thieves". This could be biased from reading this after Don Winslow's The Border -- all about Mexican Drug Cartels and the War On Drugs.
A lot of things are left unsaid, some to be answered in future books I hope, some to be left unsaid I hope! Clearly, the book is a first part of something greater and is a "how the party gets together". This is no bad thing. I will certainly be getting the next one.
Since this was an audio book, I should mention that Luke Hannafin, the narrator, does a great job of it. I was a little taken back by the echo in the narration but it could have been my player's equalizers fault. In any case, it gave the reading a sense of being done within a great Iron City which really works. Luke Hannafin's voice is easy to listen to, his different renditions of characters differentiate them easily, and his pacing is spot on.
Finally, I would like to thank Ben Myatt (/u/Bendanarama) for giving me the opportunity of reading his fine book.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Andy
- 10-09-19
Intriguing scifi
Disclaimer: I received a free copy of the audiobook from the narrator, in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.
Further disclaimer: Since it was an audiobook, this review probably mis-spells several character names.
“Clockworld: The Iron City” by Ben Myatt introduces us to Mouse, a “tunnel runner” who lives in the crime-ridden underworks beneath a metal city build around a giant clock tower, earning a living of sorts doing odd repair jobs. The origin and purpose of the clock is lost in the mists of time, and a cult has sprung up around the “Church of the Cog” and their sinister Clockmen. Mouse has attracted the interest of the Clockmen, and this is not a good thing.
Meanwhile, several tiers above, Princess Reya is more interested in studying the Clock and its origins than learning about her Royal duties. But the Clockmen are interested in Reya too, and inevitably, Mouse and Reya are destined to be thrown together to try to escape from the machinations of the Church and save the city and their families and friends.
I was immediately drawn to the setting of the story – the different tiers of the city, the machinery, the airships and of course the clock itself are brought vividly to life and I was keen to learn more about how and why they came to be there, and how they worked. The story delivers in this regard and also takes us out into the world beyond the city via the airships and barges.
The characters are well-drawn, and the dialogue is interspersed through with sharp humour. Whilst Reya and Mouse are the main characters, there is a varied supporting cast from the Queen and her spies, Marius a foreign nobleman, through to a crime boss and his offspring, and Helise the spirit of a tree, who is in charge of the airship. By the end of the book you have a feeling that a “Scooby Gang” has been assembled for ongoing adventures.
Luke Hannafin’s narration was good, except I found Marius’ sibilant “sss” sounds offputting (but the author wrote it that way so who am I to argue!) also since the author is British, and many of the characters (particularly in the underworks) use British slang phrases, hearing these voiced by an American narrator sounded odd.
The book could do with a bit of an edit for a number of occasions where a word is mis-used, for example “detrius” instead of “detritus” or “weapontry” instead of “weaponry”. I don’t know if this is due to the writing or the narration. It doesn’t really detract from the story though.
The story builds via a thrilling action sequence to a satisfying conclusion but clearly marks the way forward for the next book. It was an engrossing listen and although I did learn a lot about the city and the Clock, there is more to discover, and I look forward to the next one.
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