The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley

[lightreads]

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

3/5. Telegraphist in the London Home Office is given a mysterious pocket watch which saves his life from a bomb. So he goes looking for the watchmaker, and finds a Japanese man with a secret. And a friend. And something else.

Okay, several of you guys are going to really like this one. I came close, but I was distracted by my initial misunderstanding of this book. I had the vague impression that it was a historical spy thriller with a supernatural thread. It's actually – and you'll note this is quite different – a queer philosophical romance with a supernatural thread. Whoops.

This is slow, thoughtful, atmospheric. Very concerned with gesture and the ticking of a weird, pretty mechanism at the heart. One character can predict human actions – he knows what you'll do as soon as you decide it. Which is . . . complicated, when it comes to loving someone you haven't met yet, based on the might be.

Anyway. It's pretty. And unusual. Not as clever as it set out to be, at least not to me, and I think Pulley didn't really have control of the dismount. But I've never read anything quite like it. And it'd probably help to know what it is going in.

Comments

[yunitsa]

Yeah, this one really doesn't give anything away about what it's going to be (and I hadn't read any spoilers apart from there being an m/m romance) - I initially found that quite frustrating, and then I absolutely loved it and thought it stuck the landing perfectly. But it seems to be a book that different people have very different reactions to.

[lightreads]

Yeah, I didn't even know about the M/M until it happened. Surprised me in a good way; suddenly the prior 80% of the book made a lot more sense.

[yunitsa]

Yes, I almost wish I hadn't known that either, though it's what made me buy it! The book really doesn't telegraph *anything*, although it makes sense retrospectively - which could be a fault in the writing, but my theory is that it mirrors the way Mori's mind works, where he only knows possibilities until they crystallise into certainties: his initial memories of Thaniel in the journal, for example, are rather different from how their relationship finally works out.

[lightreads]

Yes, that's a good reading. And Thaniel himself -- we are told -- is rarely party to big decisions. Which, once it had been pointed out to me, also explained a lot about the generally . . . drifty feeling of a lot of the book. And it makes sense! But I didn't always enjoy the process of him bouncing from thing to thing.

I'd like an octopus of my own, though.

[yunitsa]

I was surprised how many feelings I had about the octopus.