In The Mechanical, Ian Tregillis (Something More Than Night) explores a dazzling array of genre themes: alternate history in which the Dutch are the major global power and the French Catholic monarchy is its enemy in exile; mechanical beings (Clakkers) enslaved by their masters to serve under painful compulsion (or geasa); and Victorian fashion and scientific sensibilities grafted onto an alternate 1926 setting in the New World.
Jax is a Clakker owned by a rising Dutch merchant family. His internal monologue brings readers into the mind of a mechanical, though the Dutch--the only keepers of the magical alchemy that brings these metal beings to life--insist they have no will or soul of their own. Jax proves this claim false when a small, mysterious glass bead frees him from his geasa.
Father Visser, a secret Papist, is the one who contrived to get Jax to take the bead to the New World and Visser's allies there. The priest is captured, tortured and given the same geasa the mechanicals endure, turning him into a murderous instrument of the Dutch crown.
French spymaster Berenice Charlotte de Mornay-Périgord, also known as Talleyrand, is determined to discover the secrets of Clakker alchemy. She brings a deadly Dutch military mechanical into the French castle, which ends up killing her husband. Exiled, she cannot set aside her need for revenge on the Dutch.
The characters are realistically flawed, the stakes are high and the settings highly detailed and believable. The Mechanical is an engaging start to a thrilling series. --Rob LeFebvre, freelance writer and editor