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The Language of the Night: Clockwork Boys [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-04-07

Normally I wouldn’t admit this, but I’m still reading…. (What can I say? it’s been quite a week.)

Anyway, I was delighted to come back to comments last week — far too late but, what can I say? that was quite a week, too — to find that I’m not the only person for whom the Temple of the White Rat world is a not-guilty pleasure. Damaged paladins, fed-up protagonists, and a temple order devoted to doing good for people who need it, a priesthood of lawyers, and a lot of missed signals crossed with longing and desire…what’s not to like?

Unfortunately, I’m still re-reading and enjoying myself, so I don’t have anything clever to write about the book, except what you already know: whimsy with a wit so sharp that Kingfisher will shiv you and you won’t notice until your eyes are stinging and you’re wondering why you’re so damned sad.

So instead I thought I’d share a few of my favorite quotations (so far):

“My god, Caliban, you look like hell.” Slate glanced up, and saw the Captain staring at the former knight with an expression less of horror than chagrin. … “I’ve been possessed, arrested, exorcised, and locked in a cell for four months. There’s a dead demon rotting somewhere in the back of my soul. What do you expect?” That does sound unpleasant. Hmm...I wonder what a rotting demon’s like? Maybe he smells it the way I smell rosemary. God, that’d be awful. Poor bastard. — page 23

The scholar was a young man with an open, thoughtful face. His current disagreeable expression did not sit well on it. “Why are we bringing a woman?” he asked, peering down his nose at Slate. “I will not travel with one of their sex.” Slate’s jaw dropped. The Captain put a hand over his eyes. “I beg your pardon?” said Slate, clearly unable to believe what she had just heard. “It it granted,” said the scholar, flicking his fingers outward in an abbreviated gesture of blessing. “Go forth and sin no more. “Captain?” He turned away. “I believe I asked—“ Caliban and Brenner, acting with rare unity, reached out an grabbed one of Slate’s arms each, before anyone could learn what her sudden lunge in the scholar’s direction might mean. “Let me go,” she hissed. “I’ll kill him. The tattoo can only eat me once.” — page 70

“Learned Edmund is apparently afraid that if he sleeps on your floor, your feminine exhalations will cause his genitals to wither and his bowels to turn to water. That’s a direct quote, by the way.” — page 95

Actually, the whole horseback riding sequence is awesome — finally, a realistic depiction of what it’s like to ride a horse in a fantasy novel! As well as care and feeding, tending the tack, the frustrations of saddling up: all of it. Kingfisher does for horses what Rothfuss did for roadside stew, which was completely show up why whipping up a pot of stew is such a joke, as anyone who’s ever cooked over a fire will testify.

After leaving the village that was decimated by the Clockwork Boys,

Slate felt a painful clutch of relief when they rode up onto it, as if somehow the presence of the wider road might protect them. It seemed to be a cue to speak again. Learned Edmund sighed. “Those poor people.” “Nothing we could do, priest.” Brenner reached out and slapped him on the shoulder. Learned Edmund started, and then offered him a tentative smile. “I don’t know why we even bother having wars,” muttered Slate. “The world’s trying to kill us fast enough as it is.” Caliban gazed between his horse’s ears, and said nothing at all. — page 113

She had a persistent vision, though, of Caliban standing before one of the gear-riddled monoliths, his sword held upright before him, like a hero out of an old story. It bothered her, not least because Caliban had been just such a hero. She could see him meeting his death that way again, on his feet, with his sword before him. … What everybody told me was the great threat actually is the great threat. Who knew? — page 124

Nice reversal of the “nobody saw the real threat coming” trope, huh?

Slate put her head in her hands and entertained a brief fantasy of leaving them all to rot, going back down the road and finding that bandit leader and seeing if he wanted to get nice and drunk together. — page 136

And finally, when Brenner and Caliban have disappeared and Learned Edmund is at the end of his tether,

Something about his posture, and the way he kept blinking, made her think that that he might be worried about crying too. Somehow that was cheering. Not because she wished him ill, but because there are few things in life as steadying as someone you have to be brave for. — page 157

One of the things I’ve been noticing on this reread is the skillful way that Kingfisher plants plot seeds that slowly, unobtrusively flower into pivotal events and essential information: the blight and the body in the well that wasn’t human, the crow cages, the Clockwork Boys themselves, the nature of demons and wonder workers that drive narrative and character as much as jealousy, possessiveness and pride do. Even the paladin in this book isn’t an archetypal paladin, but rather a flawed, partly-broken man clinging to his humanity as if it’s his only hope, and the assassin clings to his self-image of a hunter because recognition of his humanity would be damningly painful.

Finally, take a second glance at the book’s cover image and tell me if that’s not a horrific leering nightmare mask. A novel of striking contradictions, and a thorough delight worth savoring.

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