Gareth Ward
Autor de The Traitor and the Thief
Series
Obras de Gareth Ward
Etiquetado
Conocimiento común
- Género
- male
- Nacionalidad
- UK
- Lugar de nacimiento
- Banbury, Oxfordshire, England, UK
- Lugares de residencia
- Hawke's Bay, New Zealand
- Educación
- University of York
- Ocupaciones
- bookseller
Miembros
Reseñas
Premios
Estadísticas
- Obras
- 4
- Miembros
- 52
- Popularidad
- #307,430
- Valoración
- 4.3
- Reseñas
- 1
- ISBNs
- 15
Trigger warnings: Blood, grief and loss depiction, death of parents in a train crash in the past, physical assault and injury, near-death experiences, xenophobia, military violence and war themes, explosions
Score: Seven out of ten.
Brasswitch and Bot by Gareth Ward was by no means perfect, but it wasn't disappointing either. It was enjoyable. I wanted to read this one for a while and headed in with high expectations considering the ratings. The blurb looked intriguing to me, and when I closed the final page, it was a compelling, but flawed reading experience.
It starts with Wren 'Wrench' Chester-Harris living her life, except it's an alternate reality version of late 19th century York in the UK, with lots of steampunk aspects. As the name 'steampunk' implies, the technology in Brasswitch and Bot heavily relies on steam, and devices running on electricity, like the light bulb, are scarce. The catch is Wrench isn't a human, she's a cyborg, sorry, aberration, as they call it. She joins a team with two other people, Plum and Octavia, and a full robot named Bot (original.) How do they make humanoid robots in the 1800s way before AI existed, I have no idea. Anyway. These are the Regulators, tasked with keeping stuff from other dimensions, like other aberrations from entering this one. Thaumagicians are the magical equivalent to electricians.
I thought that would be tedious to read, but the writing style and pacing surprisingly engaged me (the length is barely above 300 pages,) and so did the worldbuilding. Mostly. The only issues I found were the characters, since they were likable, but they're plot devices to keep the plot-driven central storyline moving. The other one is the questions I had while exploring Brasswitch and Bot, like how did the UK get so advanced and ahead of their time? What about other countries? Octavia is a human-octopus hybrid and Plum can control elements, so how do they do that?
Ward mentions The Rupture, the portal to another dimension, but how did that come to exist? The conclusion is heartstopping with epic battle scenes. I'll have to read the second and final instalment, The Thaumagician's Revenge, to discover what happens next.