The Watchmaker of Filigree Street: The extraordinary, imaginative, magical debut novel

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I'm not sure why the offensive remarks are in here, especially when everyone sounds the same and pretty much looks the same. In an interview for Alt Hist magazine, Pulley says the arcane plot came to her through a combination of Dr. I don't particularly understand the Mori's-in-a-fog, medicine messed him up, he needs a sharp shock to pull him back to the present thing.

The story thwarts expectations; whenever an outcome looks as predetermined as clockwork, it might well go another way.

Mori was deployed sparingly throughout, although his clairvoyant machinations drove the entire plot. It's a meandering story of Mori and Thaniel and Six living their lives in London and then moving to Japan.

One of the main characters has two very special talents, one obvious and one hidden, both of them intriguing. But Mori had never mentioned how he felt, or actively instigated any of the tender moments between him and Thaniel because he assumed that Thaniel was just agreeing to the whole arrangement so he could have a free room. How their stories combine, and how Pulley juggles the complex plot and throws in multiple surprises, are but two of the many delights of a first novel that has been garnering a lot of attention. A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy. Much of the narrative of The Watchmaker of Filigree Street revolves around this deepening friendship though the pace ramps up and moves more into an adventure-type plot once Grace Carrow comes on the scene.As things progress, however, we move from mystery to history to (nearly) unrequited romance, a somewhat jarring shift in focus. Thaniel the main pov character, a simple self-sacrificing man, who sees colour and locks his dreams away. He had thought it had all gone, but all he had done was lock himself up in a few little rooms and assume the rest of the house had fallen down. Set mostly in 1880s London, Pulley’s debut novel twists typical steampunk elements—telegraphs, gaslight, clockwork automata—into a fresh and surprising philosophical adventure.

The characters (with the exception of Katsu) didn’t engage my attention because I never really felt I got to know them or their motives. Not to mention the characters you want to see together are actually separated for a good chunk of the book. I felt she didn't require me to like all of her characters, but presented them as they were and let me pass my own judgements upon them.I’ve had this in mind to read for a while but as I read your review I was struck by the number of elements in the mix. Her writing style reflects how Mori, who can remember the future, experiences the world, in bits and pieces that may go either way depending on his own choices or that of other people’s, always changing, often in jerky motions, reacting to things before they have happened. Die verschiedenen Perspektiven geben immer einen Überblick, halten aber auch vieles zurück, so dass die Spannung für mich konstant gehalten wurde. Letzter wirken sehr real und glaubwürdig, ohne Nonsens aber auch nicht unbedingt in eine gruselige Richtung, sondern mit einem ganz leichten unheimlichen Beigeschmack. Their relationship was non-existent for most of this book, the only reference to it was Thaniel's incessant pining for him.

When Grace Carrow, an Oxford physicist, unwittingly interferes, Thaniel is torn between opposing loyalties.The whole story has an air of magic and the joy is more in exploring the characters, their attitudes and how they fit together, than the mystery plot. Individually, or in smaller combinations, I enjoy all of them but perhaps this is just too much of a melting pot.