Where I Got Tired

The Immorality Engine by George Mann
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Overall--pretty good. Creative. Lots of ideas. Not bad. But kinda disappointing, if I'm honest.

Like the books before it, it was good enough to finish once started, especially as I was hoping for a good ending. (I did think it was a good ending, btw. I was content with it.) But I'm all done now. I'm tired. I put all my hope on this third book and it didn't pay off.

All three books in this series started out promising, with characters that might turn out interesting, engaging conflicts, unique technology, and a fun sense of the possible, but then dwindled to quite dull. The pacing is deadly, and neither the mystery nor the action is very impressive. The worst thing is that the two main characters show no particular skill in solving crimes and no great facility for bringing in the bad guy, or really any useful aptitude at all, whether it is knowledge or experience or physical ability or insight. Their success is more a matter of stepping into whatever mess they've encountered and surviving until the end. Their planning skills are non-existent. Their attempted break-in and rescue of Hobbes's sister at the end was managed as badly as humanly possible, so much so it has to be considered a plot hole. They are not good at this.

(The bad guys were worse. Their plan was so stupid that it totally worked and still totally failed. Sorry. Spoiler.)

In fact, IMO, if you took Newbury and Hobbes out of this or any story and replaced them with just some lady from down the street and a guy you met at the gas station, it would come out about the same.

But what's weirdest is the tone. Nothing matches. It has the off-kilter feel of steampunk, leading one to expect some levity, perhaps, or a cartoonish sensibility to go with the clockwork horses, maybe a little bit of irony, but it is deadly serious, with the off-putting reality of gruesome goings-on, all of it feeling harsh and too earnestly told. I make it sound almost like it would work, but it does not. Not for me.

Well, it's okay. The imagery is highly imaginative and would probably translate well to a graphic novel or something. And I liked it enough to finish, as I say, so I won't give it a "did not like" rating of 2. But neither do I much recommend this or the others in the series.

Try it, if you like. YMMV.

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