Natasha Pulley’s The Watchmaker of Filigree Street is a historical fantasy, set in late Victorian London, that seems determined to bring in … well, everything you might imagine turning up in a historical fantasy set in late Victorian London:
- steampunky mechanical things? ✓
- dark and narrow London alleyways? ✓
- English orientalism? ✓
- The Woman Question? ✓
- stern and bigoted Victorian patriarch? ✓
- delicate and bigoted Victorian matriarch? ✓
- Gilbert and Sullivan? ✓
- The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name? ✓
And yet … it’s a really well-told story, and Pulley is a promising writer. I just hope that her next outing contains fewer predictable elements.
Text Patterns
July 29, 2015