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.
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3 comments:
Thanks for the reading suggestion, Editor Betsy. :)
Am I starting to look like Betsy?
Oops.
I meant Editor Dave. :) The Gremlin made me write Betsy!
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