Be among the machines in Daniel H. Wilson’s book, “The Clockwork Dynasty” (Book Review)

Post date: Dec 4, 2018 12:59:32 PM

By: Kelsey Alder, Staff Writer

Posted December 4th, 2018

"The Clockwork Dynasty” by Daniel H. Wilson is a book about ancient machines that look and function more or less like humans and live around us, but are fighting a war between each other. Overall, the story was pretty unique; however, it didn’t have many surprises either. Throughout the story, June and Peter are both trying to fight in the millenia-old war being waged between the automatons, but Peter is also dealing with an internal conflict. He doesn’t know who he is. All of the automatons have a word that they must follow unconditionally, but he doesn’t feel like he is living up to that word in anything he does. Also, June is trying to be a part of this new world made of clockwork, but the automatons are so much stronger than her. She is trying to understand how she can make a difference when she barely survived her first encounter with an automaton. One thing I didn’t like was that it took quite a while before the book picked up and got interesting. The beginning was very slow, but after they finished the lengthy exposition the book got quite interesting. With that said, the book was good, and an interesting read. The story and ideas behind it were new and the author definitely knew a lot about the subject. I definitely enjoyed reading the book, and would recommend it to people who like more complex books and are patient with an author's storytelling.