Devices and Desires
When an engineer is sentenced to death for a petty transgression of guild law, he flees the city, leaving behind his wife and daughter. Forced into exile, he seeks a terrible vengeance -- one that will leave a trail of death and destruction in its wake. But he will not be able to achieve this by...
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When an engineer is sentenced to death for a petty transgression of guild law, he flees the city, leaving behind his wife and daughter. Forced into exile, he seeks a terrible vengeance -- one that will leave a trail of death and destruction in its wake. But he will not be able to achieve this by himself. He must draw up his plans using the blood of others...In a compelling tale of intrigue and injustice, K. J. Parker's embittered hero takes up arms against his enemies, using the only weapons he has left to him: his ingenuity and his passion -- his devices and desires."A richly textured and emotionally complex fantasy...Highly recommended." --- Library Journal (Starred Review) "When so many fantasy sagas are tired, warmed-over affairs, a writer like K.J. Parker is more of a hurricane than a breath of fresh air." --- Dreamwatch
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780316003384 (0316003387)
ASIN: 316003387
Publish date: October 25th 2007
Publisher: Orbit
Pages no: 635
Edition language: English
Series: Engineer Trilogy (#1)
When Tom Holt uses his K. J. Parker heteronym, at his best, is a very good genre writer: which is not to say that genre writers can't be as good as (if not better than) their literary counterparts - but they have not been taken as seriously, which is true even now. I must admit I found Gene Wolfe's ...
Uuggh... So I have read other reviews that discuss the brilliance of the plotting within this book...and I admit that these reviews kept me going throughout this long book...I had hope! In the end, this book was tedious and monochromatic. It was overlong, the characters lacked life and I just di...
Sharp and refined, the dialog crisp, the characterizations and motivations precisely sketched, the plot an intricately interlocked mechanism. The first book leaves the reader with only a vague idea of how that mechanism is constructed--we know what the Rube Goldberg machine will do, but can't begin ...
An industrial republic borders on two warring feudal duchies. When an engineer escapes the technically-advanced Mezentine City, he upsets the power balance of the continent. There's an interesting struggle between thought processes of the meritocratic City, wherein the workers serve the machines, ...
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