Mainspring by Jay Lake, a steampunk alternate history book

Denver Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Club

MAINSPRING
by
JAY LAKE

Mainspring (2007)

Tor paperback (left)
324 pages + preview of Escapement

Tor hardback (right)
320 pages

cover art by Stephan Martiniere

From the inside cover of the hardback:
       Her Imperial Majesty Queen Victoria still rules New England and her American Possessions; the Royal Navy rules the skies with its mighty Airships; and Earth still turns on God's great brass gears of Heaven as it makes its orderly passage around the Lamp of the Sun from Midnight to Midnight and Year to Year.
       In the town of New Haven, a young man is apprenticed to a Clockmaker to learn a Profession and an Art that owes as much to God as to Man.
       But Hethor's life is set on a new course one strange night. He wakes to find a living brass Angel in his attic room, great wings sweeping to the low rafters. The Angel tells him that he has been Chosen. The Mainspring of Earth is running down and must be rewound by Man. He, Hethor, must take the Key Perilous, find the place where the Mainspring may be rewound, and save Earth.
       As a token, the Angel leaves Hethor a fine silver feather from his wing. Hethor's blood from the knife edge of the feather is proof enough that this is not a dream.
       From innocence and ignorance to power and self-knowledge, this unlikely young man must make the long and perilous journey to the South Polar Axis to fulfill the commandment of his God.

From the back cover of the paperback:
       Her Imperial Majesty Queen Victoria still rules New England and her American Possessions; the Royal Navy rules the skies with its mighty Airships; and Earth still turns on God's great brass gears of Heaven as it makes its orderly passage around the Lamp of the Sun from Midnight to Midnight and Year to Year.
        In the town of New Haven, a Clockmaker's young apprentice is visited at midnight by a brass Angel, and told that he, and he alone, can find the Key Perilous to rewind the Mainspring of Earth. If he does not, the planet will wind down, and life will cease.

Read for group discussion on September 10, 2008

RATINGS:
How we each rated this book

Dan	-	Amy	5	10 Wow! Don't miss it 8-9 Highly recommended 7 Recommended 5-6 Mild recommendation 3-4 Take your chances 1-2 Below average; skip it 0 Get out the flamethrower! U Unfinishable or unreadable - Skipped or no rating given
Cheri	3	Barb	-
Aaron	-	Cynthia	-
Jackie	6	Ron	4
Patty	5

Bibliography:
Jay Lake (1964- ) is a US writer of fantasy and science fiction.

Awards
2003 quarterly first place winner in the Writers of the Future contest
2004 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer

Mainspring series
--Mainspring (2007)
--Escapement (2008)

The City Imperishable series
--Trial of Flowers (2006)
--Madness of Flowers (forthcoming Dec. 2008)

Other novels
--Rocket Science (2005)

Story collections
--Greetings from Lake Wu (2003)
--American Sorrows (2004)
--Dogs in the Moonlight (2004)
--The River Knows Its Own (2007)

Chapbooks
--Green Grow the Rushes-Oh (2003)

Edited by Jay Lake
--Polyphony 1 (with Deborah Layne) (2002)
--Polyphony 2 (with Deborah Layne) (2003)
--Polyphony 3 (with Deborah Layne) (2003)
--Polyphony 4 (with Deborah Layne) (2004)
--All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories (with David Moles) (2004)
--Polyphony 5 (with Deborah Layne) (2005)
--Polyphony 6 (with Deborah Layne) (2006)
--TEL: Stories (2005)
--Spicy Slipstream Stories (with Nick Mamatas) (2008)

Links:
Jay Lake: Home
Jay Lake - Wikipedia
Locus Online: Jay Lake interview excerpts (2006)
SF REVIEWS.NET: Mainspring / Jay Lake
SF Signal: REVIEW: Mainspring by Jay Lake

Return to Home Page - Denver Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Club

E-mail: SFandFBookclub@aol.com
This page was last updated October 15, 2008