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Clockwork Boys and The Wonder Engine: Clocktaur Wars series by T. Kingfisher

Impressions

Not quite reviews, I talk about books I read and enjoyed.

Okay so the first thing you need to know, because I tip my biases, is I’ve essentially loved everything that Ursula Vernon / T. Kingfisher has written since Digger was just another webcomic in the list of 100 I hit daily.

That being said, most of the works of hers I’ve read have been in the form of either modern retellings of old fairy tales (of which Bryony and Roses is probably my favorite) or Dragonbreath chapter books (because you’re never too old for good chapter books).

The Clocktaur Wars aren’t like that. Way way not like that.

My understanding is that Ursula Vernon got annoyed about how poorly other people told the “tortured Paladin rejected by his god” trope, and decided to fix it. And fix it she did.

This book has supernatural dealings. It has a pantheon of gods. It has tattoos that bite. It has a very talented forger who I want to be when I grow up. It has a tortured paladin. It has dead demons and live ones. It has romance and tension and cute talking animals and not-cute-at-all terrifying monsters and an ending that had me both going “wait what the FUCK just happened?” and “well of course because that’s the only logical thing that can happen no wait WHAT THE FUCK.”

Oh, yeah, this one is certainly not a chapter book for the kiddies.  (Although frankly 12-year-old me would’ve loved it as much as I do now.)

So read Clockwork Boys and love it and then read The Wonder Engine because after the first one you’re not just going to hang on that cliff forever.

 

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Day 297: Went back for more tools already

One Among the Dead

Sometimes you need a project that’s just for, y’know, goofing around. This is the ongoing saga of my Minecraft character. For lack of a better title, we’re going with “One Among the Dead”. 

Day 297:

I broke all my iron tools already, which tells me something about the oxygen or carbon or something in this last set was way off. It had been really rainy the day I smelted that iron, so maybe it was the weather, or maybe it was something in the ore, I don’t know.

It does mean I get to sleep in my most comfortable bed tonight, though, so I’m excited about that.

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Day 296: Still going up to go down

One Among the Dead

Sometimes you need a project that’s just for, y’know, goofing around. This is the ongoing saga of my Minecraft character. For lack of a better title, we’re going with “One Among the Dead”. 

Day 296:

More ore above me so I’m still digging up.  I can hear zombies rolling off the walls and down to smack the ground below.

I wonder if they have some kind of pupal zombie state where they hang from the walls until adults?

Seems dumb, but so does an exploding giraffe-corgi.

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Day 295: Splut ka-fizzle

One Among the Dead

Sometimes you need a project that’s just for, y’know, goofing around. This is the ongoing saga of my Minecraft character. For lack of a better title, we’re going with “One Among the Dead”. 

Day 295:

There’s a particularly nice sound when an exploding giraffe-corgi falls from a great height into a pool of lava.

Though I’m glad they don’t explode because I’d probably be burned to death, I’m simultaneously disappointed to not see a lava fireball show.

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Day 294: Everything is canyons

One Among the Dead

Sometimes you need a project that’s just for, y’know, goofing around. This is the ongoing saga of my Minecraft character. For lack of a better title, we’re going with “One Among the Dead”. 

Day 294:

Now I’m almost sure this isn’t the same canyon I was digging in earlier, but it might be one of the earlier canyons?

OK, so here’s a thing that keeps happening:

I dig through a wall into a wide cavern with no signs of ore in any direction.

Way above my head is a torch embedded in the wall and I think, for a split second, “Oh my cod! I found someone! There was someone else here!”

And then I recognize the mark that I started carving into torch handles a while ago (for just this reason) indicating that no, this is my torch, and I’ve been digging here before, which is why there’s no ore…

…but there’s also no walls or floors, and I’m usually pretty particular about them.

So am I digging into areas I was legitimately in?

Am I digging into areas where someone’s placed old torches I’d left in other areas, just to confuse me?

Am I digging through time?

Or am I just breathing some heinous fumes from being too close to the lava?