Angelmaker in Fantasy-Faction.com

Mar 19, 2012 Rick-Founder JM CM BOOK CLUB rated it it was amazing

"From the acclaimed author of The Gone-Away World, blistering gangster noir meets howling absurdist comedy as the forces of good square off against the forces of evil, and only an unassuming clockwork repairman and an octogenarian former superspy can save the world from total destruction.

Joe Spork spends his days fixing antique clocks. The son of infamous London criminal Mathew “Tommy Gun” Spork, he has turned his back on his family’s mobster history and aims to live a quiet life. That orderly "From the acclaimed author of The Gone-Away World, blistering gangster noir meets howling absurdist comedy as the forces of good square off against the forces of evil, and only an unassuming clockwork repairman and an octogenarian former superspy can save the world from total destruction.

Joe Spork spends his days fixing antique clocks. The son of infamous London criminal Mathew “Tommy Gun” Spork, he has turned his back on his family’s mobster history and aims to live a quiet life. That orderly existence is suddenly upended when Joe activates a particularly unusual clockwork mechanism. His client, Edie Banister, is more than the kindly old lady she appears to be—she’s a retired international secret agent. And the device? It’s a 1950s doomsday machine. Having triggered it, Joe now faces the wrath of both the British government and a diabolical South Asian dictator who is also Edie’s old arch-nemesis"

What an amazingly unique rollercoaster of a ride ANGELMAKER is!! This is a very hard novel to categorize as it contains so very much in the way of plot, characterizations and wit. I suppose if you take a dash of Dickens, add a spoonful of HG Wells, a sprinkle of Pratchett and a tumbler of Spillane- you might have a general idea of this utterly original novel. While I have named several legendary writers, ANGELMAKER is all Nick Harkaway..and what a creative, sharp-witted and skilled writer Mr. Harkaway is!

Joe Spork is very happy with his nice quiet life working with antique clocks. An existence forever changed by the arrival of one of the most endearing and surpising characters you will meet- Edie Banister- who is nothing like the nice old lady she first appears as!! She is a standout amonst a book chock full of wonderful and eccentric characters! She is also the reason that nice, quiet Joe Spork is forced to undertake the journey of a lifetime- a journey the reader is lucky enough to be a passenger on...and a journey one is not likely to forget anytime soon!!!

A JAMES MASON COMMUNITY BOOK CLUB MUST READ

RICK FRIEDMAN
FOUNDER
THE JAMES MASON COMMUNITY BOOK CLUB ...more

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Feb 02, 2012 Fellshot rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: don-t-know-what-it-is-but-i-read-it

I am generally not prone to unmitigated and spontaneous squeeing except on rare occasions or when presented with almost anything that may be described as “adorable.” Since “adorable” is what I use to describe baby octopi and itty bitty corn snakes as well as my chinchilla, you can take that as you will. Nevertheless, I was in a major tizzy of anticipation over this book. Quite possibly my biggest book tizzy of the year.

Angelmaker centers around one Joe Spork who in addition to having an awesome I am generally not prone to unmitigated and spontaneous squeeing except on rare occasions or when presented with almost anything that may be described as “adorable.” Since “adorable” is what I use to describe baby octopi and itty bitty corn snakes as well as my chinchilla, you can take that as you will. Nevertheless, I was in a major tizzy of anticipation over this book. Quite possibly my biggest book tizzy of the year.

Angelmaker centers around one Joe Spork who in addition to having an awesome name to start with, also has his father's legacy of crookery to live down as well. While trying to get by as a clock and antique repairman, he is given an unusual piece with some minor connections to his respectable grandfather. Things take a rather remarkable turn for the worse, the secretive, the extremely dangerous, and the strange shortly thereafter.

I seriously enjoyed the style of writing. Since it's all written in the present tense, there is a certain sense of immediacy to it, but strangely, when the story was focusing on Joe being quiet and contemplative the prose managed to mirror that without an inadvertent feeling of urgency attached to it. It was a joy to read through. There's a lot more focus on how characters perceive the things and people around them instead of just what they look like. The descriptions can be as hilarious as they are evocative. I found the theme running through the book particularly relevant given how many people have to cheat "the rules" in some way to get by and many reasons that we do so, both good and bad.

Actually I ended up with only a fuzzy idea of what some of the characters looked like, but I don't care because they were entirely awesome. Joe Spork's transformation and realizations through the novel matched up well with the action line of the story and yet left plenty of time at the end for a thoroughly satisfying and delightful conclusion after all the messes had been mopped up Prohibition style. I really really enjoy how the story is pieced together into an ever accelerating crescendo with a free fall and landing at the end.

While Joe Spork becomes a better and better character as the novel progresses, then there are the others. Or to use Angelmaker's phrasing, the Women of Consequence, Polly, Edie, Frankie and Dotty Catty. Especially Edie since she provides nearly all of the background for the psychopathic villain and the abstract reason for fighting Shem. And she's a gun toting, super spy great-auntie who carries her explosives in Tupperware. Her flashback scenes initially felt a bit jarring in the beginning of the story, but as it progressed those flashbacks became more and more important to Joe's present and the awakening of the Apprehension engine. It's through Edie's relationship with Frankie that the small differences between the lady inventor and the nasty villain Shem become apparent to the reader. Then there's Polly. Joe has to develop a lot as a character to get up to Polly's level of awesome. She's clever, determined and knows how to get what she wants out of people and doesn't necessarily need to use large amounts of explosives or tommy guns to do so.

I loved this book and will read the covers off of it for a long time to come.
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