If I told you the setting elements of this novel, you'd surely guess it was some sort of off-color, absurdist work. Dali-esque clocks litter the landscape, the indigenous peoples are clowns (literally and genetically, just to be clear), mimes make war with colossi, ... you get the idea.

But you'd be wrong. Lavie Tidhar is telling a serious story here, and he does so ably. It's a strange effect though: this serious story that defies its absurd trappings. It's a testament to Tidhar's skill that he does this without it seeming forced.

In an update while reading this, I described it as what would happen if Douglas Adams and Cormac McCarthy's love child had written Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, and I think that's still a fair nutshell description. Adams's quirk elements in a serious McCarthy-esque western (including some echoes of his descriptive flair to boot) in a surreal, otherworldly landscape that borders on our reality and is intimately tied to the protagonist's life in that reality.

If that combination of authorial peculiarities piques your interest, don't hesitate to pick up this gem.

Nothing about this novel disappointed me. I loved the characters and the focus on the story (echoing McCarthy's one sci-fi novel, The Road, neither of them have names, just titles: The Stranger and The Kid). I delighted in how the weirdness of the world was related in such a deadpan manner and taken so seriously by characters and author alike that it felt perfectly natural. Tidhar resists the urge to be sly or tongue in cheek. And so, once I was into the story, I was never tempted to take it any other way.

All that is to say that I loved this both for the story and characters (and poignant ending) and for how well it was put together and written. I'll definitely be checking out more of Tidhar's work soon. ( )

Lavar is known for mixing genres and this one is wild. And touching. ( )

a Stranger travels the rails in a surrealist Western landscape. his travel seems aimless, his involvement minimal, but gradually he uncovers a goal. elsewhere, he occupies another timeless modern landscape, in a hospital room where he can no longer read to his dying son. memories drift by, of cutting the umbilical cord at his son's birth, going with him to a circus, a moment of happiness. meanwhile, in the Western world, The Kid seeks his father, a conjuror from the Greater Arcana and a slippery character altogether. The Kid and The Stranger meet, and part, and meet again. a red flower becomes a quest. myth contends with pulp novels as clowns join an inexplicable war in which landscapes and people and not quite people come and go. and all these unforgiving and violent images combine to create a sensation of real loss as the Stranger travels back and forth in time while standing still. ( )

The Escapement by Lavie Tidhar was funny, heartbreaking, surreal, and powerful. It’s about a lone gunman on a quest for a magic flower, in a desert landscape full of Wild West tropes, circus imagery, and elder gods—but it’s also about life on the margins, love, memory, reality, and loss. It’s a story only Tidhar could pull off and he’s done it with aplomb. I went in blind and loved it. ( )

This is the first of this year's PKD Awards nominees that I've read, and I'm less than sanguine with the whole affair. The book is a mishmash of motifs, some interpolated, that nominally support the core story of the father's love for his dying son, but after a while it feels a lot like he's substituting a mass of "smart" and "knowledgeable" references for actual substance. The issue, I think, is that this is in actuality a 25 page short story that's been puffed up to 240-some pages for one reason or another, and it's too much.

A lot of people have made the comparison that this is a lot like the Gunslinger. That may or not be the case; normally I don't read the crap that passes for entertainment these days, so I can't say this is true with any authority. What I can say is that this book reminded me of H.P. Lovecraft's Randolph Carter stories because of the nature of the "world" and it's connections to our reality. It reminded me of Wicked, too, but that's only because of the level of pretense involved in both works. ( )