Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Publication
London : Orbit, 2005.
Description
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.
User reviews
LibraryThing member plappen
First of a trilogy, this fantasy novel is about an engineer who starts a major war so he can be re-united with his wife and daughter.
Mezentia is a city-state that is the local technological superpower. They don’t let their technical knowledge get out to the surrounding kingdoms, which is how they
Vaatzes is picked up by the remnants of the army of Eremia, one of the neighboring kingdoms. They are struggling to get back home after attacking Mezentia, and getting slaughtered by superior Mezentian weapons. His offer to train Eremians in how to build the weapons that just decimated their army is politely declined, but Vaatzes is set up in a factory of his own by the Eremian equivalent of a venture capitalist. Vaatzes does not just start at the beginning, he has plenty of building, planning and training to do just to reach "the beginning." In Mezentia, tolerances and specifications are expected to be exact (anything less is not good enough), but in Eremia, the best Vaatzes can do is "pretty good." He and his employees have scoured the city looking for scrap metal to use in the weapons, but they will get the job done.
Meantime, the Mezentian Council has learned that Vaatzes is still alive, and is building weapons for the Eremians. The decision is made to invade Eremia, and wipe the entire race off the map. Nothing is more important than Mezentian technological superiority. Civitas Eremiae, the Eremian capital, is built into the side of a mountain, and is nearly impossible for an invading army to conquer. But, it does have a very secret, and very ancient, "back door."
Parker is an author who Gets It. This is a big novel, but it is an excellent piece of writing that will really keep the reader’s interest. I may just read the other two, equally large, parts of this trilogy just because the storytelling is so good.
Mezentia is a city-state that is the local technological superpower. They don’t let their technical knowledge get out to the surrounding kingdoms, which is how they
Show More
keep their superiority. Mezentia is also a land of guilds, where technical specifications and tolerances were decided long ago. It is written into law that, for instance, a certain gear shall be no larger than a certain size (down to hundredths of an inch) or a certain lever shall be a certain length, and no longer. Ziani Vaatzes, a talented engineer, breaks the rules, unintentionally, in building a mechanical toy for his daughter. He is sentenced to death by the Mezentian Council, accused of Abomination, and manages to escape with his life.Vaatzes is picked up by the remnants of the army of Eremia, one of the neighboring kingdoms. They are struggling to get back home after attacking Mezentia, and getting slaughtered by superior Mezentian weapons. His offer to train Eremians in how to build the weapons that just decimated their army is politely declined, but Vaatzes is set up in a factory of his own by the Eremian equivalent of a venture capitalist. Vaatzes does not just start at the beginning, he has plenty of building, planning and training to do just to reach "the beginning." In Mezentia, tolerances and specifications are expected to be exact (anything less is not good enough), but in Eremia, the best Vaatzes can do is "pretty good." He and his employees have scoured the city looking for scrap metal to use in the weapons, but they will get the job done.
Meantime, the Mezentian Council has learned that Vaatzes is still alive, and is building weapons for the Eremians. The decision is made to invade Eremia, and wipe the entire race off the map. Nothing is more important than Mezentian technological superiority. Civitas Eremiae, the Eremian capital, is built into the side of a mountain, and is nearly impossible for an invading army to conquer. But, it does have a very secret, and very ancient, "back door."
Parker is an author who Gets It. This is a big novel, but it is an excellent piece of writing that will really keep the reader’s interest. I may just read the other two, equally large, parts of this trilogy just because the storytelling is so good.
Show Less
LibraryThing member antao
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
Show More
work to be good too, rather than something to be proselytised for, or raved about. Moorcock's essay "Epic Pooh" is a good analysis in some respects (though perhaps influenced by Terry Eagleton et al, and Marxist Lit-Crit in general) and admits the fact the LOTR writing is at least accomplished. Of Moorcock's work "The Dancers at the End of Time" series is both funny and readable and "The Condition of Muzak" to me seems still his best. Folk finding Peake to be overwritten just proves what sort of literary world we now inhabit: Orwell's plain English has come back to bite us on our collective arse, and we can no longer cope with sentences with sub clauses, or paragraphs full of metaphor via elision. Oh, well. It's just that when folk write stuff like "The Book of the New Sun" is the best fantasy ever written, I must assume that they haven't read much to compare it to, genre fantasy or otherwise. No doubt all shall be well in the ground of our beseeching, if that's the phrase I'm stretching for. Much modern fantasy suffers from a need to be perceived as dark, and combined with a desire to out-epic the competition it's led to something of a sameness in the huge-number-of-mutilated-dead count, tougher-than-the-last-tough-guy hyperinflation, and characters flawed by their amorality or brutality (Staveley comes to mind). Parker maintains a personal scale, even though world-changing events (though his worlds always have a sparseness to them - rarely any heaving multitudes), and his characters are flawed by their vulnerabilities. There's darkness aplenty - I find more horror in his themes of erasure or corruption of identity than in how many hundreds of thousands of anonymous bodies line roads to cities (Baker, Staveley, Ryan, Cameron, etc.). This approach pays dividends in his mastery of character development. His books follow anything but an expected path - unexpected events shape characters in entirely unforeseen ways, and while that can lead to great emotional investment on the part of the reader, Parker can be bruisingly unsentimental. That’s why I say fantasy is the progressive rock of literature. It has its ardent fans who champion its cause in the face of utter derision from critics. It has its fair share of pretentious tosh but there are nuggets of excellence to be found if you look hard enough with an open enough mind, a bit like its sister, science fiction. Another factor in fantasy's 'rehabilitation' that might be worth exploring is the prevalence of fantasy in computer and video games. Why does that work so much better than, say political fiction? Anyway, from someone who has read SF (science Fiction and Fantasy) for over 30 years, I’m still surprised we can still find writers writing non-magic fantasy. I like prog rock too, naturally, but that's another story... Parker is a peerless creator of genuinely unearthly mindscapes. The other great thing about K. J. Parker is that even with his fantasy potboilers he still entertains me with his florid use of language, the weird and wonderful names, and the little details he drops into his stories, products of his wild imagination that elevate even the most mundane tales. SF = Speculative Fiction. Show Less
LibraryThing member jimmydare
A fantasy novel set in a world where engineering and mechanics are the "magic." This is the first fantasy novel I've read in years, and I'm enjoying it quite a bit.
LibraryThing member PoshGeek
Excellent--better and more fluid command of language than I've seen in some time, but still an easy read. Characters are multi-dimensional and intelligently drawn. Drags a bit in places, could've used a good edit. That and you hope that after 700 pages you'll have a better idea of "the plan," but
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then I guess that would spoil the fun. Show Less
LibraryThing member picardyrose
This is good on so many levels, I can only say that when I was finished, I craved Book 2 like the pages were potato chips.
LibraryThing member stubbyfingers
This is a fantasy novel but there is no magic, there are no mythical creatures, and there is no quest. In fact there aren't really even any heroes or villains. Needless to say, this isn't your typical fantasy novel. The setting is somewhat low-tech--there is no electricity, but otherwise the
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engineering of the day has worked marvels. One of the world's top engineers has broken a law--a minor infraction really, but still punishable by death. For love of his wife and daughter, he does not submit to the punishment, but instead flees to a poor neighboring country where he can put his engineering skills to use. In an attempt to extradite him and to ensure their engineering secrets aren't leaked, war is waged on a massive scale. Meanwhile, what's this relationship going on between the duke of a third country and the duchess of the poor country? Will the third country become embroiled in the war? This a great story filled with love, friendship, loyalty, betrayal, treason, secrets, machinations and epic battles. The pace could've been a little quicker, but for the most part I loved it. When I finished reading this I wanted to start reading the sequel without pause. Show Less
LibraryThing member Jennisis
It seems that this is a book that many people have a hard time determining their feelings about - some love it, some despise it and many are ambivalent.
I really liked this book in that it kept me guessing as to everyone's motives - I still am not entirely sure the motivations of the main character,
The rest of the characters evoked similar feelings - though often they were stupid, detached, weak...utterly flabber...more It seems that this is a book that many people have a hard time determining their feelings about - some love it, some despise it and many are ambivalent.
I really liked this book in that it kept me guessing as to everyone's motives - I still am not entirely sure the motivations of the main character, Vaatzes. Alternately I liked him, pitied him and hated him.
The rest of the characters evoked similar feelings - though often they were stupid, detached, weak...utterly flabbergasted by the main character's actions as I was.
I was entertained by the wry wit of the author and the repeated references to rules of Fashion, Tolerance and statistical tables of war. The author illustrates his world's cultures solidly.
The discussions of metalworking and engineering were quite interesting, but sometimes a bit drawn out. Similarly, the portrayal of the hunt - however, having never been on a formal hunt, yet having read about many in various books, this is the first time that I felt an author fully understood what it entails and gave me a complete picture of it as well. So, while it derailed the narrative a bit, I still enjoyed it.
Unfortunately, the "evil villain" of the book falls into the trap of all cliche evil villains and explains his master plan to a captive in one of the last few chapters of the book...not quite all of it, but I'd rather have had the "Aha! He did it!" moment revealed another way than in a smug monologue.
I also would have appreciated a few more female characters, or at least more "screen time" and development for those that exist.
I will definitely go on to read the rest of the series, despite the weaknesses of the book.
I really liked this book in that it kept me guessing as to everyone's motives - I still am not entirely sure the motivations of the main character,
Show More
Vaatzes. Alternately I liked him, pitied him and hated him.The rest of the characters evoked similar feelings - though often they were stupid, detached, weak...utterly flabber...more It seems that this is a book that many people have a hard time determining their feelings about - some love it, some despise it and many are ambivalent.
I really liked this book in that it kept me guessing as to everyone's motives - I still am not entirely sure the motivations of the main character, Vaatzes. Alternately I liked him, pitied him and hated him.
The rest of the characters evoked similar feelings - though often they were stupid, detached, weak...utterly flabbergasted by the main character's actions as I was.
I was entertained by the wry wit of the author and the repeated references to rules of Fashion, Tolerance and statistical tables of war. The author illustrates his world's cultures solidly.
The discussions of metalworking and engineering were quite interesting, but sometimes a bit drawn out. Similarly, the portrayal of the hunt - however, having never been on a formal hunt, yet having read about many in various books, this is the first time that I felt an author fully understood what it entails and gave me a complete picture of it as well. So, while it derailed the narrative a bit, I still enjoyed it.
Unfortunately, the "evil villain" of the book falls into the trap of all cliche evil villains and explains his master plan to a captive in one of the last few chapters of the book...not quite all of it, but I'd rather have had the "Aha! He did it!" moment revealed another way than in a smug monologue.
I also would have appreciated a few more female characters, or at least more "screen time" and development for those that exist.
I will definitely go on to read the rest of the series, despite the weaknesses of the book.
Show Less
LibraryThing member demonite93
It's long and at times drawn out at times but incredibly ....... different. I found it really interesting and you really have to be careful not to loose track of all the building/engineering junk he talks about to make sure it's understandable. Knowledge of midevil weapons and all that junk helps
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too. Check it out it's all ok and lon and................ you get the point it's a good time filler. Show Less
LibraryThing member SimonW11
Devices and Desires
K.J. Parker
Volume one of a fantasy trilogy. I enjoyed this. On a low tech continent there exists one city with a highly developed industry based on mechanics. This regimented society has by ruthlessly suppressing new ideas maintained its economic dominance. One of its citizens
K.J. Parker
Volume one of a fantasy trilogy. I enjoyed this. On a low tech continent there exists one city with a highly developed industry based on mechanics. This regimented society has by ruthlessly suppressing new ideas maintained its economic dominance. One of its citizens
Show More
threatened with death escapes. To regain his wife he .engineers both a war and the weapons to fight it. Apart from the city dwellers the majority of characters in this are nobles with a strong sense of noblesse oblige. but it seems likely that selfish love will lead them all to betray those ideals of friendship, duty and honour. Show Less
LibraryThing member Ehlana
A very good start to a series that I hope will end in 'and they all lived happily ever after'..... except, of course, this is K J Parker so that's highly unlikely!
LibraryThing member JenneB
I liked the very machine-like plot (appropriate for what is basically a swashbuckling adventure novel with an engineer as the (anti)hero).
It felt like every chapter was adding another cog or gear or something
that would keep changing your expectation of what the eventual result was supposed to be,
click. click. click. click. BOOM.
I can't wait to read the next one and hopefully find out more about the Cure Hardy. What is their deal? Anyway, I gave this 5 stars because I kept being surprised by how much I was liking it.
However, a few problems:
--Does not pass the Bechdel Test
--Uses the always-frustrating "WE GO DEAF" plot device, e.g. "Then the lieutenant described the fatal flaw in the castle defenses, and everyone laughed heartily and began preparations for the invasion." (not an actual quote)
--And THEN, uses the hoary "(anti)villain describes his whole master plan in the last 10 pages of the book" plot device.
I mean, really??
It felt like every chapter was adding another cog or gear or something
that would keep changing your expectation of what the eventual result was supposed to be,
Show More
but that that result was inevitable anyway. click. click. click. click. BOOM.
I can't wait to read the next one and hopefully find out more about the Cure Hardy. What is their deal? Anyway, I gave this 5 stars because I kept being surprised by how much I was liking it.
However, a few problems:
--Does not pass the Bechdel Test
--Uses the always-frustrating "WE GO DEAF" plot device, e.g. "Then the lieutenant described the fatal flaw in the castle defenses, and everyone laughed heartily and began preparations for the invasion." (not an actual quote)
--And THEN, uses the hoary "(anti)villain describes his whole master plan in the last 10 pages of the book" plot device.
I mean, really??
Show Less
LibraryThing member wagner.sarah35
A strikingly original story, full of politics and war and betrayal. At its outset, the engineer Ziani Vaatzes is sentenced to death for making an object outside of his Guild's specification. Fleeing the only city and civilization he has ever known, Ziani begins to set a course that will start a
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war, cost thousands of lives, and change his world, all so that he can make it back to his family. A clever story, one that I look forward to continuing. Show Less
LibraryThing member wealhtheowwylfing
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,
I won't read the rest of the trilogy. Parker has a very good, skillful style, but I hate the story zie told.
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and the medieval duchies, in which rule is passed via primogeniture and tools serve the workers. The plot is pushed forward by two forces: the Mezentines' need to maintain a monopoly, and various love affairs. The romances really, really annoyed me. I was also frustrated with Parker's Martin-esque tendency to introduce lots of interesting characters and then do horrible things to each of them. I got very anxious, and I had to force myself to finish the novel. I won't read the rest of the trilogy. Parker has a very good, skillful style, but I hate the story zie told.
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LibraryThing member GretchenLynn
Devices and Desires is set in a fantasy world that seems comparable to our middle ages. Ziani is an engineer from Mezentia, where rules abound and being inventive is frowned upon. He has wonderfully inventive ideas, and because of them he finds himself in jail for a 'specifications violation'.
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Worried for his family, he escapes and starts on an adventure into other lands. One thing that struck me about this book is that everyone, but especially Ziani, has a plan. The thing is, you only get to see the plans bit by bit as they become relevant to the story. Everyone is using everyone as a part of their plan, and everyone is in the dark about what the plan is - most of all the reader. Every time you think you know why someone is doing something, they do something new that completely throws you off. And Ziani is known to talk about how he thinks people and events will fit nicely into his plan, even though the reader doesn't know what his plan is. It is a book that keeps you guessing, and keeps you reading to find out more. Show Less
LibraryThing member antao
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
Much modern fantasy suffers from a need to be perceived as dark, and combined with a desire to out-epic the competition it's led to something of a sameness in the huge-number-of-mutilated-dead count, tougher-than-the-last-tough-guy hyperinflation, and characters flawed by their amorality or brutality (Staveley comes to mind). Parker maintains a personal scale, even though world-changing events (though his worlds always have a sparseness to them - rarely any heaving multitudes), and his characters are flawed by their vulnerabilities. There's darkness aplenty - I find more horror in his themes of erasure or corruption of identity than in how many hundreds of thousands of anonymous bodies line roads to cities (Baker, Staveley, Ryan, Cameron, etc.). This approach pays dividends in his mastery of character development. His books follow anything but an expected path - unexpected events shape characters in entirely unforeseen ways, and while that can lead to great emotional investment on the part of the reader, Parker can be bruisingly unsentimental. That’s why I say fantasy is the progressive rock of literature. It has its ardent fans who champion its cause in the face of utter derision from critics. It has its fair share of pretentious tosh but there are nuggets of excellence to be found if you look hard enough with an open enough mind, a bit like its sister, science fiction. Another factor in fantasy's 'rehabilitation' that might be worth exploring is the prevalence of fantasy in computer and video games. Why does that work so much better than, say political fiction? Anyway, from someone who has read SF (science Fiction and Fantasy) for over 30 years, I’m still surprised we can still find writers writing non-magic fantasy. I like prog rock too, naturally, but that's another story... Parker is a peerless creator of genuinely unearthly mindscapes.
The other great thing about K. J. Parker is that even with his fantasy potboilers he still entertains me with his florid use of language, the weird and wonderful names, and the little details he drops into his stories, products of his wild imagination that elevate even the most mundane tales.
SF = Speculative Fiction.
Show More
work to be good too, rather than something to be proselytised for, or raved about. Moorcock's essay "Epic Pooh" is a good analysis in some respects (though perhaps influenced by Terry Eagleton et al, and Marxist Lit-Crit in general) and admits the fact the LOTR writing is at least accomplished. Of Moorcock's work "The Dancers at the End of Time" series is both funny and readable and "The Condition of Muzak" to me seems still his best. Folk finding Peake to be overwritten just proves what sort of literary world we now inhabit: Orwell's plain English has come back to bite us on our collective arse, and we can no longer cope with sentences with sub clauses, or paragraphs full of metaphor via elision. Oh, well. It's just that when folk write stuff like "The Book of the New Sun" is the best fantasy ever written, I must assume that they haven't read much to compare it to, genre fantasy or otherwise. No doubt all shall be well in the ground of our beseeching, if that's the phrase I'm stretching for. Much modern fantasy suffers from a need to be perceived as dark, and combined with a desire to out-epic the competition it's led to something of a sameness in the huge-number-of-mutilated-dead count, tougher-than-the-last-tough-guy hyperinflation, and characters flawed by their amorality or brutality (Staveley comes to mind). Parker maintains a personal scale, even though world-changing events (though his worlds always have a sparseness to them - rarely any heaving multitudes), and his characters are flawed by their vulnerabilities. There's darkness aplenty - I find more horror in his themes of erasure or corruption of identity than in how many hundreds of thousands of anonymous bodies line roads to cities (Baker, Staveley, Ryan, Cameron, etc.). This approach pays dividends in his mastery of character development. His books follow anything but an expected path - unexpected events shape characters in entirely unforeseen ways, and while that can lead to great emotional investment on the part of the reader, Parker can be bruisingly unsentimental. That’s why I say fantasy is the progressive rock of literature. It has its ardent fans who champion its cause in the face of utter derision from critics. It has its fair share of pretentious tosh but there are nuggets of excellence to be found if you look hard enough with an open enough mind, a bit like its sister, science fiction. Another factor in fantasy's 'rehabilitation' that might be worth exploring is the prevalence of fantasy in computer and video games. Why does that work so much better than, say political fiction? Anyway, from someone who has read SF (science Fiction and Fantasy) for over 30 years, I’m still surprised we can still find writers writing non-magic fantasy. I like prog rock too, naturally, but that's another story... Parker is a peerless creator of genuinely unearthly mindscapes.
The other great thing about K. J. Parker is that even with his fantasy potboilers he still entertains me with his florid use of language, the weird and wonderful names, and the little details he drops into his stories, products of his wild imagination that elevate even the most mundane tales.
SF = Speculative Fiction.
Show Less
LibraryThing member noradannan
Beautiful, tragic, and stunning.
LibraryThing member wyvernfriend
There's a lot of engineering and complex politics that I found quite believable. Three countries hold a tentative truce but things are getting more complicated when an engineer from a very regimented country commits a minor transgression that means that he is condemned to death he escapes and goes
Theres a fair amount of engineering in here and I liked the different attitudes of all the characters, many of them I wanted to know about and I really want to read the next book in the series.
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to another country. The other country doesn't realise that this will not be good and will lead to being wiped out.Theres a fair amount of engineering in here and I liked the different attitudes of all the characters, many of them I wanted to know about and I really want to read the next book in the series.
Show Less
Subjects
Awards
Locus Award (Nominee — Science Fiction Novel — 2008)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2005
Physical description
548 p.; 22 cm
ISBN
1841492752 / 9781841492759
Local notes
Omslag: Leonardo da Vinci
Omslaget viser en firevinget ornithopter
Indskannet omslag - N650U - 150 dpi
Omslaget viser en firevinget ornithopter
Indskannet omslag - N650U - 150 dpi
Series
Pages
548
DDC/MDS
| 823.914 |