Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti

Mechanique is the story of a circus in another world, a world that's been at war for hundreds of years, and a circus filled with mechanical people who cannot die. Various despots in the countries where the circus works envy the circus its mechanical, deathless people, and want to discover how the magic works.

The characters are compelling and original, the writing is lovely, the plot is utterly unusual and unique. There are no world-saving schemes, no messiahs, no saviours, no quests, no war between Good and Evil--just a collection of very strange people making something beautiful in an ugly world. I read it in a morning. Well worth picking up--even if you think you don't like fantasy novels.

This is a fucking phenomenal prose poem. I know, it's billed as a novel, but trust me on this: it's a prose poem. The writing is just gorgeous. As soon as I finished, I started all over again, just so I could wallow in the language and recognize the things which resonated on the second reading and hadn't on the first. The last novel that impressed me this much was [a:Nicola Griffith|90780|Nicola Griffith|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1194117329p2/90780.jpg]'s [b:Slow River|270259|Slow River|Nicola Griffith|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320543794s/270259.jpg|261993], and this is frankly better than Griffth's debut, [b:Ammonite|180270|Ammonite|Nicola Griffith|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320459764s/180270.jpg|1876209], which show more is an impressive debut in its own right. Which is to say READ THIS OMG. show less

Brilliant

THE MECHANICAL CIRCUS TRESAULTI
FINEST SPECTACTLE ANYWHERE
MECHANICAL MEN beyond IMAGINATION
Astounding feats of ACROBATICS
The Finest HUMAN CURIOSITIES
The World has ever SEEN
STRONGMEN, DANCING GIRLS
& LIVING ENGINES
FLYING GIRLS, LIGHTER than AIR
MUSIC from the HUMAN ORCHESTRA
BARGAIN ENTERTAINMENT for ONE and ALL

Our story opens with a second person introduction of you visiting the circus and continues with several changes of POV and tense which could be jarring but is very much at the service of the story and the beautifully drawn world building. This is an achingly good story, told with an expert voice. We follow several characters and grow to live and love with the circus which is like a large dysfunctional family. This is a show more steampunkeqsque world, set post collapse, where the circus travels the country but tries never to revisit places, or at least not within living memory. As we progress with the circus we are embroiled in the petty politics of the performers and gradually learn more about the world, getting back stories of the performers. I read this is in one sitting, picking it up in the morning and not able to put it down until it was finished, and what a read it was! Highly recommended.

Some parts of the past cannot be reclaimed, he knows. Better not to raise ghosts.

Overall – Beautiful, painful, joyous, adventurous tapestry to be savoured and devoured and thrust into the hands of all those who share your reading tastes… show less

This book won't be for everyone, and everything I loved - the terse and taut writing style, the ruthless characterisation, the unflinching slow collision of tragedies and unravelling of mysteries - might be something others don't like. True for everything, and I really did love this.

It's about belonging and being outside, it's about refuge and sacrifice, it's about wanting and about refusing... it's about loving someone so hard and for so long that you no longer see them, and hating someone so closely that you need them. And it's all delivered with the elegance of poetry, or performance, but no airy-fairy nonsense. The language is picked for punch and the author does not care to hide behind polysyllabic show-off words (...unlike me show more :D).

But it lingers, and well after I closed the final page, I'm still thinking about the story, the themes, the characters. And that is the real mark of something strong and enduring. show less

I taught a class called Ideas to Outlines, or Outlining for Organics. As part of the process I presented, I tried to cover all the possible starting points for a novel. The hardest for me was a mood story, because I hadn’t actually encountered one with that focus. I’m all about story, and in most modern novels at least, that means plot-focused.

Mechanique proved me wrong in the most delightful way. This is not a book for the plot-driven, straight-forward reader, but if you’re willing to lay yourself open to a twisted, tangled journey that often reminded me of an Escher painting, Mechanique will surprise and awe you.

This novel does not hold to point of view conventions, uses second person and intrusive narrators at times, gives no show more warning when thrusting you into past events, and the story unfolds in glimpses, just enough to have you thinking you’ve found the main point only to lose it again.

At the same time, there is a clearly defined story. Well, actually several of them. This is not a naval-gazing, stream of consciousness novel. Valentine knows exactly where it’s going and how all the pieces fit together, or at least that’s how it comes across.

The characters are compelling, each with their own story and their own reasons behind what they do. The world itself is introduced bit by bit until you get a surreal picture that is so concrete it becomes real. But the strongest part of this novel is the mood. It’s hard to explain because it’s part the world, part the language, part how the story unfolds, and part how everything comes together. I recommend Mechanique wholeheartedly. It’s more than just a read. It’s an experience.

I’ve talked about what made Mechanique special, but neglected the basics. It’s a steampunk apocalyptic novel about a traveling circus. However, the feel of the novel is more important than the genre in this case. It’s worth giving a read.

I got the title from NetGalley or I might not have come across it, but I’m glad it caught my eye. show less

A wondrous, sharp, unique and very beautiful Steampunk tale.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” she calls.

Her voice fills the air. It feels as if the tent grows to accommodate the words, the circle of benches pushing out and out, the tinny Panadrome swelling to an orchestra, the light softening and curling around the shadows, until all at once you are perched in a tiny wooden seat above a vast and a glorious stage.

The woman’s arms are still thrown wide, and you realize she has not paused, that her voice alone has changed the air, and when she goes on, “Welcome to the Circus Tresaulti!” you applaud like your life depends on it, without knowing why.

A tale of a world ravaged by war and a very very old travelling circus; with its musician show more and acrobats, its aerialists (and once upon a time its winged man), Its creations made from brass and copper and bone. A, joyous, ever-lasting spectacle in the darkness but one soon to be under threat, from stewing obsessions within and jealous aspirations without.

This is a simply stunning debut. It's not your every day tale of adventure but a book to read for the characters, to wallow in its gorgeous prose. Oh the plot and drama are there (and tense) but this a book to feel. To feel the circuses timelessness and fragility, to understand the patchwork of its characters; cruel Elena, cold and broken (and terrifying) Bird, endearing everyman George and of course the stoic Boss who rules them and whose strength, when threatened, shakes you

This is what Elena sees the first time she meets Bird;

Hunger.

Elena sees the darkness of the tent; the darkness of the grave; the shiver of the wings as Alec trembled under her hands, his feathers an armour that would not hold.

"She won't last", Elena says.
Alex didn't.

It is a brave book, with a strong style that could irritate some. Short chapters and stripteases with the truth, an unseen seductive storyteller that gives way to 1st and 2nd narratives. Nor is it a lighted hearted whimsical book, the shadow of costs given and hard truths learnt are entwined in familial belonging, with love and hope. I loved spending time in the world, watching the characters grow, learning the stories mysteries and hopping against hope it works out in the end.

“Then Tresaulti departs, and the life of the city tries to follow and cannot; even the buildings stumble and fall, become lost. When a city has no greatness, its will is done; then a city is nothing but a maze of shells that are only stone and steel and -soon enough- dust.

Never read a book like it, cannot believe how much it succeeds. Highly recommended.

Early chapters here.. I just want to quote the whole thing at you!
http://www.circus-tresaulti.com/sample-chapters/ show less

A steampunk fantasy about a circus which travels across a post-apocalyptic landscape plagued by war and political instability.

It is easy to describe Mechanique is about: the circus and its secrets, about how various characters came to join it and how they work together, about happens when things go wrong. But that doesn't capture what it is like.

Mechanique can be dark and unsettling and cold. The mechanical alterations the Boss makes to people - alterations which save them, yet come at a cost - are eerie. The people who join the circus often do so in desperation, because they don't have many other options. The circus offers the security of a home and a job - yet it's a precarious just-scrapping-by and accepting-there-are-risks sort of show more security. There's warmth and camaraderie, but there's also grief and bitterness.
And it's obvious, from the very beginning, that things go wrong.

The story holds the reader at a distance: because there are so many characters and it is impossible to get to know all of them; because much of the story is told from Little George's perspective, and he is often an observer who doesn't understand the circus he has grown up with (to be fair, George is also a happy, hopeful filter to watch the circus through).

A powerful, evocative story. I admired it more than I enjoyed it, but I think I'm glad I read it.

Boss always tells the rubes that her late husband made us all.
"Oh lord," she says when they wonder about our mechanicals. She lifts her hands and trills. "I can barely oil the things, let alone!"
She doesn't say what she lets alone, and no one asks. [...] I think she says it so they get the feeling we could break at any moment. It's always more exciting to watch something you know could backfire. [...] (I didn't understand her. I had been with the circus too long: I felt too safe to know why it was better to make some thing seem breakable and frail. I didn't know how might come looking for us. If they thought we were strong enough to take hold.) show less