I seem to need a night semi-off.*  So I thought I’d give you a book rec.  I should do this more often.  All this frelling reading should be GOOD for something, shouldn’t it?

I read this quite recently—on Astarte.  On the Kindle app on my iPad.  There have been various outbursts on the forum about the far greater desirability of old-fashioned hard-copy books with ink and pages and covers you open and close over and against the virtual screen pages you swipe with a finger on your e-reader of choice.  Most of us acknowledge, more or less reluctantly, that e-readers have their place, however, especially the carrying your entire library with you in one slim electronic package aspect.  When the next 7,000 flights are cancelled at Heathrow/O’Hare/Kuala Lumpur/Mars Central at least you have plenty to read.**

There’s another reason for e-readers as most of you know although it’s not so much discussed.  I think it unsettles us Luddites.  Which is that sometimes an e-book version is the only one available.  And then you’re very glad to have it.

I don’t remember when I first started tripping over intriguing references to ALCHEMY OF STONE.  It finally got on my amazon wish list when it was merely out of stock, and I wasted some time looking around for it elsewhere while waiting for it to come back into stock.  I think there was a spell there when it wasn’t available anyway, anyhow—except for £3,612,007 on eBay—so when I accidentally discovered, some time later, that it was available on Kindle, I grabbed it.

There’s a certain justice to reading it as an e-book however;  the central character is an automaton named Mattie.  She was created by a clever, but damaged both physically and morally, human man;  and given by him partial autonomy.  Their society is divided into Mechanics and Alchemists.  He is a Mechanic;  he grants her freedom to study alchemy, become an alchemist, live apart from him and stop ministering to his whims—much;  but he retains the key that winds her heart.  That keeps her alive.  Or ‘alive’.

Of course the basic story tension is between Mattie, who is far more human than Loharri is, even if he is the one made of flesh and she is the one made of springs and clockwork—by him.  But it’s also about the balance, or lack of it, in their society.  The status quo is unravelling as the book opens, and things start going badly wrong. . . .

There is so much to like in this book, starting with the gargoyles on page one, who come to Mattie for alchemical help.  Mattie herself is a spectacular piece of story-telling;  you never for a moment forget she’s not human and yet every reference to ‘the bronzed wheel-bearings of her joints squeak their mechanical greeting’ or ‘Her frame clicks as she leans forward. . . . Her dress is low-cut, and . . . there is a small transparent window in her chest, where a clockwork heart is ticking along steadily’ or ‘She extended her hand, the slender copper springs of her fingers grasping a phial of blue glass’ only makes her more human.

And I liked this book a lot.  Sedia writes so well.  Real style is far rarer than one might wish it were.  Than I wish it were.  Now, truth in advertising:  this is not the most cheerful and optimistic book you’ll ever read.  But I prefer to read the ambiguous ending as hopeful. 

* * *

* Probably because we’ve had bad news about someone close to us and it casts a long shadow. . . . Dear bleeding Christ on the cross dying for our sins why is life LIKE THIS?

** Although a back-up battery and a universal^ mains charger would be a good plan.

^ I guarantee that when they start laying power cables in the red dirt of Mars your travelling mains charger/power adapter will need another lobe.  Every frelling country on Earth seems to have its own unique idea about electricity delivery.  Think of the rampant pioneering possibilities of an entire fresh planet.