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The Clockwork Crown by Beth Cato

This is the sequel to The Clockwork Dagger. At the end of The Clockwork Dagger, I mentioned that the book was fine, but not my A+ number one, so I wouldn’t really look for more of the series. Part of blah that assuming that the next book would be the middle of a trilogy… which meant that when I learned that it was only a two book series, I decided to check out the sequel.

Octavia and Alanzo continue their flight, and are soon in a much less war torn land. It’s still a world on the edge of industrialization, with grime and rampant poverty played up from the start. From there, the two of them move through various societal strata, and have difficult relations with Alanzo’s family.

Long story short, the book was well written and went to some very interesting places (a call back about Mrs. Stout’s family, an explanation for the Tree’s fading), and Octavia struggles appropriately–there’s a lot of difficulty to overcome, and it takes a lot of pain and grit at the end. The implacable tree at the end proves to be as sad a betrayal to us as it is shocking to Octavia.

Everything resolves in a nice epilogue; the world went through a rough patch, but it’s going to be revitalized now. Which is a fine place to leave the world. I’m left ambivalent; it was a good story, with good characters and unique powers, well told… but they’re still not books that I love. I’m again vaguely curious at to what you’d do next with the world, given the tumultuous changes, but am content to let it lie.