CBR 14 BINGO: Time, because there is a watch on the cover, and a watch in the title, and it deals with the way a person’s possible futures can shift through time
Note: I’ve included spoilers to explain what it was that I didn’t like about this novel.
The Watchmaker of Filigree Street has all the ingredients required to create something I should love: interesting characters, a non-linear interpretation of time, steampunk-esque mechanics, a beautiful cover, a dash of feminism, and an anthropomorphic clockwork octopus. There were moments during the first half of this book when I was on the verge of loving it, in fact. But just mixing eggs, flour, sugar, and chocolate in a bowl doesn’t necessarily get you a delicious cake. Sometimes you throw all those ingredients together and you get a soggy mess.
In 1883, Thaniel Steepleton, a London telegraph clerk, receives a box on his birthday containing a beautiful gold pocket watch. There’s no note included, and Thaniel’s only living relative is his widowed sister, who would never be able to afford such a gift and, at any rate, denies any knowledge of it. Months later, the watch saves Thaniel’s life by setting off an alarm moments before a bomb explodes in Scotland Yard. In pursuing the source of the watch, Thaniel finds the watchmaker, a man named Keita Mori who is now, obviously, a prime suspect in the bombing. In getting to know Mori better, Thaniel notices something strange–it seems like Mori anticipates things Thaniel is about to say, almost as if he is clairvoyant. Mori explains he anticipates “possibilities.” So while he can’t exactly predict the future, he sees probabilities, and events that don’t happen disappear from his memory.
At the same time, Grace Carrow is studying physics at Oxford. She’s considered an odd woman (studying science and all), and her one close friend is Akira Matsumoto, who comes from a well-off family. There’s obviously a mutual attraction between them, but Matsumoto’s family is very traditional, and he tells her to forget any ideas of a future together. That’s bad news for Grace, not just because she has feelings for Matsumoto, but because she needs to marry in order to receive the inheritance of her late aunt’s house. Once Grace leaves Oxford, her science-ing days are over unless she can set up her own laboratory. So the future she most desires is tied to landing a husband.
The solution to Grace’s problem arrives in the form of Thaniel, who agrees to marry Grace so that she can inherit her aunt’s house and set up her lab. In return, he’ll be in better financial shape to support his sister and her children. It’s a marriage of convenience, except that for Thaniel it’s a “nice to have,” whereas for Grace her entire future depends up on it.
When the three characters–Thaniel, Mori, and Grace–come together, what starts out as a mystery about a watch and a bombing evolves into a lovers’ triangle. This is where the book falls.
First of all, I didn’t realize until the third act that this novel was supposed to be a romance between Thaniel and Mori. On the chemistry scale, their relationship barely registers as an appealing bromance. We learn through a flashback that Mori left a prestigious position in Japan to move to London so that he could meet Thaniel. It boggles my mind to think that he left his homeland in anticipation of the possibility of the most boring romance in literature.
Second, the rules of Mori’s clairvoyance are unclear. He supposedly senses probabilities, yet somehow he can use those senses to plot “accidents” over the course of many, many years. During the climax, when Grace is trying to stop Thaniel from leaving her for Mori, the predictions and guesses and changes in direction make about as much logical sense as the movie Tenet. If Mori’s clairvoyance is as powerful as the novel suggests, shouldn’t he be able to use it for something productive, like stopping the Scotland Yard bombing in the first place? Maybe if I reread this novel I’d find answers to the many questions I have, but this book just wasn’t enough fun for me to want to do that (much like the movie Tenet).
Third, and what really kind of pissed me off, is that somehow Grace, the scientist who challenges gender norms by studying physics at Oxford and who is forced to marry in order to pursue her chose career, is cast as the villain of this story. Her character is inconsistent (she’s anti-suffragist because most women are vapid, unlike her). It’s hard to know whether we are even supposed to like her. In the end, she is sorry for trying to keep Thaniel and Mori apart, and she’s rewarded when she runs into Matsumoto again. It’s implied that Grace and Matsumoto will end up together and that Mori helped arrange it, because now partial clairvoyance can even overcome social taboos.
I hate to be so harsh about a first novel, but this book is a mess. I like my cake fully baked, and this one came out of the oven too soon, I expect.
