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Mainspring by Jay Lake
01/07/2008 . Source: Tomas L. Martin 
pub: TOR/Forge. 320 page hardback. Price: $24.95 (US), $31.00 (CAN). ISBN: 978-0-7653-1708-7. Buy Mainspring in the USA - or Buy Mainspring in the UK  check out website: www.tor-forge.com
Jay Lake is a name that crops up a lot when discovering future great Science Fiction writers. His short work has received great acclaim, including nominations for the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards and winning the 2004 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.
'Mainspring' is the first of his novels published with TOR, with a few other books previously released by independent press publishers like Night Shade Books. It taps into the zeitgeist of the 'clockpunk' genre, a sub-genre adjacent to steampunk which features fantasy elements combined with industrial technologies powered by springs and clockwork.
Lake's novel goes even further, however. Creationists say that because the universe is even more complicated than the intricacies of a watch, there must somewhere be a watchmaker who built it all. Lake takes this premise and runs with it, creating a clockwork world that moves on rails through a divinely ordered sky.
However, the Mainspring of the book's title that powers the world's spin is winding down and without intervention the world will slow and die. Archangel Gabriel appears to young clockmaker's apprentice, Hethor, and tells him he must find the Key Perilous and rewind the Earth's Mainspring.
Hethor sets off on an epic journey across the re-imagined geometry of an Earth where a giant brass wall encircles the equator, the English rule much of the Northern Hemisphere with fleets of airships and fantastical creatures live on the other side of the wall.
'Mainspring' is an enjoyable adventure with some superb world-building. The first half, especially the sections where Hethor is aboard a Royal Navy airship heading south, is fascinating and exquisitely imagined. The action sequences as they approach the wall are thrilling.
The second half of the book after Hethor leaves the Navy behind is patchier and the climax never really fulfilled the expectations set up by the early chapters. It's still an enjoyable read but once Hethor crosses the equator the plot becomes a lot more linear and more predictable. The relatively short length of the book may contribute to this and I would have liked to have seen as thorough an exploration of the Southern Hemisphere as the earlier North sections.
'Mainspring' remains an extremely interesting and enjoyable book that highlights one of the exciting new voices in fantasy and Science Fiction today. I hope Jay Lake will still be producing great fiction many years from now.
Tomas L. Martin
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