24 January 2009

Writing on Reading: The Alchemy of Stone

The Alchemy of Stone by Ekaterina Sedia is a steam punk fantasy that explores an issue usually left to sci-fi--and it does a great job. Matti is an "emancipated" automaton who has a love/hate relationship with her creator (with some strange sexual overtones). Matti's creator refuses to give Matti the key necessary to wind her up, thereby forcing her to maintain a bond with her creator that she resents.

Sedia does a nice job looking at this relationship from a "female" automaton's perspective. She also builds an interesting world filled with machines, magic, and gargoyles. 

The Alchemy of Stone was printed by a small speculative fiction press called Prime Books. Given the quality and uniqueness of this novel, I'll look forward to reading more of Prime's offerings.

3 comments:

lesleylsmith said...

Thanks for the reading suggestion, Editor Betsy. :)

David E. Hughes said...

Am I starting to look like Betsy?

lesleylsmith said...

Oops.
I meant Editor Dave. :) The Gremlin made me write Betsy!