Early Review – The Escapement by Lavie Tidhar (5/5 stars)
Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Western Fantasy
Length: 256 pages
Publisher: Tachyon Publications
Release Date: September 21, 2021
ISBN-13 : 978-1616963279
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone
Source: eGalley from NetGalley
Rating: 5/5 stars
“Into the reality called the Escapement rides the Stranger, a lone gunman on a quest to rescue his son from a parallel world. But it is too easy to get lost on a shifting landscape full of dangerous versions of his son’s most beloved things: cowboys gone lawless, giants made of stone, downtrodden clowns, ancient battles, symbol storms and more shadowy forces at play.
But the flower the Stranger seeks still lies beyond the Mountains of Darkness. Time is running out, as he journeys deeper and deeper into the secret heart of an unforeseen world.”
Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I got an eGalley of this through NetGalley to review.
Thoughts: I really loved this book, although it won’t be for everyone. Previous to this I read Tidhar’s Bookman Histories and really enjoyed them. The story mainly follows a character called The Stranger who falls back and forth between our world and a circus-like world whose natural inhabitants are different types of clowns. In our world he is a father sitting beside the bed of his dying child and in the circus world he is on a quest to find a rare flower that will save his child.
The descriptions are amazing throughout and the clown world is incredibly creative and imaginative. I loved some of the imagery here and never knew what surprise I would find on the next page. This does have a fairly dark vibe to it but still comes off as magical and whimsical at times.
The comparison between this book and The Dark Tower series is very apt. The Stranger ends up joining up with a character called The Kid. The Kid in turn is searching for The Conjurer. The landscape here is a lot more fanciful than the Dark Tower series, but it has a similar questing type of vibe to it and characters fall back and forth between worlds.
My Summary (5/5): Overall I really, really enjoyed this and would recommend it. My only caution is that the story feels a bit ambiguous at times and the ending is fairly open. This is one that won’t be for people who like a very straight-up and defined story. However, for me it was about the journey, the adventure, and the crazy world that lies just beyond our own. I just loved the world-building here and really enjoyed the strange and expected turns the story took.
