Devices and Desires (Engineer Trilogy, #1)

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Devices and Desires (Engineer Trilogy #1)

3.71 of 5 stars 3.71 · rating details · 1,495 ratings · 190 reviews

When an engineer is sentenced to death for a petty transgression of guild law, he flees the city, leaving behind his wife and daughter. Forced into exile, he seeks a terrible vengeance -- one that will leave a trail of death and destruction in its wake. But he will not be able to achieve this by himself. He must draw up his plans using the blood of others...

In a compelling...more

Paperback, 672 pages

Published October 25th 2007 by Orbit (first published July 30th 2005)

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Mar 03, 2008 Stacey rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Devices and Desires is a fantasy novel about an engineer named Ziani who is sentenced to death for deviating from the Specification, the rules that all Guildsmen must follow. Worried about what will happen to his wife and child, Ziani manages to escape and makes plans to manipulate the neighboring countries into war that will reunite him with his family.

The author pays great attention to detail, the sections on metalworking and the overarching philosophy and the politics of the Guild are realist...more

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Feb 16, 2009 Mark rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Devices and Desires, by K.J. Parker. Book One of the Engineer Trilogy.
Published January 2006 (UK), by Orbit UK.
ISBN: 1841492760
706 pages

One of the latest up-and-coming writers in Fantasy has been KJ Parker. He/She is the author of The Fencer Trilogy and The Scavenger Trilogy, both of which have been well liked and received.

That may be enough to make some readers rush to the stores for this latest work now.

The first line is a wonderful hook. The book starts:

‘ “The quickest way to a man’s heart,...more

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Mar 17, 2009 Jenne rated it 5 of 5 stars

I liked the very machine-like plot (appropriate for what is basically a swashbuckling adventure novel with an engineer as the (anti)hero).

It felt like every chapter was adding another cog or gear or something
that would keep changing your expectation of what the eventual result was supposed to be, but that that result was inevitable anyway.

click. click. click. click. BOOM.

I can't wait to read the next one and hopefully find out more about the Cure Hardy. What is their deal? Anyway, I gave this 5...more

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Jan 24, 2009 Tracy rated it 1 of 5 stars

I've always believed in the old adage, "A fool speaks when he should be silent," and this book does everything in its power to prove this true. It is painfully, embarrassingly stupid, and I feel I have grown stupider for having read it. The word garbage isn't strong enough to describe the juvenile, arbitrary, and irredeemibly moronic development of both plot and characters. I could store my car in the plot holes of this book and use them to drive to California without having to worry about the w...more

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Jan 07, 2008 Lane rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fromfantastictoweirdtosci-fietc

This is fantasy in the sense that it takes place in a world with different cultures than ours, but otherwise there is nothing fantastic about it. Other than one off-hand reference to manticores in far-off lands (which is easy to miss and has no relevance whatsoever to the plot or setting) everything is firmly grounded in the reality of physics, human interaction, and engineering of those two sets of rules.

An industrial republic shares a region with feudal, medieval style nations, hoarding its t...more

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Jan 27, 2008 Angela rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy

I read this book. I started the second book. I STILL DON'T KNOW IF I LIKE IT OR NOT. Augh.

I think it's because I hate the protagonist (the too-perfect exiled engineer, who is AWESOME AT EVERYTHING wut) but like the rest of the book. However, as it seems like the series is about the protagonist systematically destroying everything in the rest of the book in an attempt to do... something... it rather annoys me.

The only thing which kept me reading, really was Duke Valens, and the covers. I must adm...more

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Mar 05, 2009 Weylin rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ryan recommended this book to me. It's like equal parts Shogun and Popular mechanics (or in this case medeviel mechanics). the book had lots of suprises and the verbal explantions of engineering did nothing to detract from the actual story. Well worth the read!

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Dec 18, 2007 Craig rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy

This one was hard to rate. Imaginative world creation and unique writing style might have been worth four or five stars, but I had real trouble staying engaged. Like no other book in recent memory, I'd read a chapter or two, enjoying the characterization and story, but find my interest fading for some reason. I'd put it down for a day and repeat the process again and again until I finished the book. I liked the book for sure, but was very disappointed not to have liked it more. Would be worth a...more

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Jun 27, 2012 Peter E. Frangel rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: epic-fantasy, 2010

It's always a toss-up when trying to decide whether or not to start a 650 page book. Or at least the hard part is when you get to page 350 and realize that you're not sure whether you want to finish or not, but then are struck in the face with the idea that you've already read more than half, so what the heck...just finish the thing.

Devices and Desires is one of those books that has all the right ideas, all the things you are looking for in a fictional book. Character development, an awesome syn...more It's always a toss-up when trying to decide whether or not to start a 650 page book. Or at least the hard part is when you get to page 350 and realize that you're not sure whether you want to finish or not, but then are struck in the face with the idea that you've already read more than half, so what the heck...just finish the thing.

Devices and Desires is one of those books that has all the right ideas, all the things you are looking for in a fictional book. Character development, an awesome synopsis and plot-line, great use of language and beautiful descriptions. The problem is that it's all over the top. It's all stretch out and dragged across 650 pages when it could have been very well done over about 400-450.

At least 1/4 of the entire thing is fluff. Insignificant fluff. Descriptions about mechanisms and the way they work can be interesting, and the way the mind of the engineer works is intriguing, true. I enjoyed first getting to know the man and see the scheming, calculating things that go through there...but come on, when you get to the end of the book and he's still talking about how 'true' this or that is and complains about 'tolerance' of something he built from scratch to compare it to the 'tolerance' of the same thing in his homeland, quoting several paragraphs from a handbook for us to read and not understand. The concept is good, but a lot of it sounds like its straight out of a mechanical engineering textbook and I can barely understand a word out of those things. This doesn't allow you to relax while you read, it makes you feel like you're analyzing a essay.

Also, the characters are deep, but I don't really feel sympathy or attachment to any of them...they're all a little immature for me, all in their own way. You've got the friend who tries to be the nice guy but always ends up saying things that could completely compromise the entire government he helps rule, but nobody except for me, the reader, seems to catch those slips. You've got the naive duke at his side, opposed by the duke who is always on top of everything in the neighboring country, and they are all three fighting for the same girl who acts like she's a fourteen year old high school-er.

I don't know about this one. Obviously, I'm not portraying this book in a good light even though there are some really good things about it. K. J. Parker is a very talented writer and I could only wish to have some of her skill in sentence structure and word usage. But the truth is that there are just not enough things going on for the amount of words that she put behind them.

Devices and Desire was a decent novel, but it wasn't good enough for me to pick up the next volume, Evil for Evil, since I could barely stand to finish this one in the first place.(less)

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Jan 29, 2012 Jaine Fenn added it · review of another edition

I admired this book, but did not enjoy it. Parker creates a convincing world with complex geo-politics, but everyone in this book is a total bastard. OK, not everyone: occasionally someone displaying one of those foolish human weaknesses like 'compassion' or 'empathy' shows up, but they are quickly and efficiently destroyed by the bastards. As a reader who likes a character to root for, this was a problem for me, because whilst I could appreciate the thoroughness with which a given bastard shaft...more

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Oct 16, 2011 Megan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

(Re-posted from http://theturnedbrain.blogspot.com)

There was a time, years ago now, when literally all I read were fantasy trilogies. I enjoyed that the longer format allowed for a story of more epic scope and that there was more time to spend getting to know the characters. But I had this fear of buying the first part of a trilogy, and then not being able to get a hold of the next volumes. (This was before I was able to internet shop, you see). So, if I saw a trilogy that sounded cool more ofte...more (Re-posted from http://theturnedbrain.blogspot.com)

There was a time, years ago now, when literally all I read were fantasy trilogies. I enjoyed that the longer format allowed for a story of more epic scope and that there was more time to spend getting to know the characters. But I had this fear of buying the first part of a trilogy, and then not being able to get a hold of the next volumes. (This was before I was able to internet shop, you see). So, if I saw a trilogy that sounded cool more often then not I’d just buy all three books then and there. What can I say? I was still living at home and didn’t have bills to pay.

Which is how I came to own thee parts to K.J. Parker’s Engineer Trilogy, ‘Devices and Desires,’ ‘Evil for Evil,’ and ‘The Escapement.’ I read the first one and a bit of the second and then just kinda stopped, I think possibly uni got in the way? I don’t know, I had a habit of not finishing books back then, for no real reason. (The reading habits of past Megan makes now Megan shake her head). I remember the trilogy, what I read of it, being dense and hard to get through. But in a good way. Like an extremely rich chocolate cake of which you can only eat one sliver at a time. Certainly my memories were positive enough that I recently decided to finish the damn thing, even though it meant rereading the first part again. (This is the reason I doubt I’ll ever complete the Wheel of Time trilogy, I just can’t bring myself to reread 10 volumes…)

My memories were correct, these are not books that lend themselves a fast reading, but as I said, that’s not a bad thing. The books are set on what I would guess is a small continent. On one side we have close neighbours the Vadini and the Eremians, who have only recently ended a centuries long war. On the other side of the continent are the Perpetual Republic, a dark skinned race who settled on the continent relatively recently. These guys are pretty epic engineers and had established a firm monopoly of all metal worked goods. They’re also pretty anal when it comes to deviating from their established blueprints. Think the Church in dark ages if someone tried to deviate from the bible… One guy, Ziani, makes some little improvements on a doll for his daughter and is sentenced to death for it. Pretty harsh, no? So anyway, he escapes to Eremia and sets about crafting an insanely intricate plan to be reunited with his family, and never mind if thousands of bodies are left in his plan's wake.

This is the trilogy’s driving plot which constantly pushes events forwards, but there are a number of other plots which eddy around it. We have the young duke Valens, ruler of the Vadini people, and his technically innocent but really not correspondence with Vetriz, the wife of the Eremian duke, Orsea, who is himself crippled by his own perceived shortcomings. And there’s Psellus, the Perpetual Republic bureaucrat who becomes slowly obsessed with understanding Ziani. And we can’t forget Mikal, an important Eremian nobel who’s honour is so unbending it’s bound to shatter….

And this hasn’t even stretched the surface of it all! If meticulously crafted plots are your thing, than you can really look no further than this. Every event has a cause and effect, with both tragedies and triumphs occurring naturally and with a sense of inevitability. You will find no deux ex machinas in the pages of these books, which is fitting when you consider that the closest any of the main races come to religion is the Perpetual Republic's blind adherence to their specifications.

Which makes for a refreshing change, to read a fantasy trilogy without any gods. I do occasionally enjoy books where the gods take human form and wander about missing shit up (Jenniffer Fallon's 'Demon Child' trilogy being an excellent example), but too often the inclusion of gods/God can become a short cut for the author. In the godless Engineer trilogy each character is responsible for their own lives, with no fate or destiny to nudge them this way or that. It’s a theme that runs strongly throughout the text, questions of choice and how much blame a man (or woman) should take for the result of their actions. Do the ends justify the means, and should an eye be taken for an eye? As I said, without the interference of some all knowing omnipotent presence to offer easy answers, it offers up some fascinating questions. (Which, upon finishing the books, I have answers for).

But of course would what really makes this book appeal to me is the characters. They’re a flawed, three dimensional bunch, and I would be hard pressed to identify which of them are bad guys and which are good. There are no heroes and villains here, just people. My favourite character is easily Duke Valens. Forced to take command after the early death of his father, Valens is an extremely competent and well liked duke. But what we can see that his adoring people can not, is that the guy’s a little bit of a sociopath. I wish that more of the trilogy had been told from Valen’s unique point of view. I also enjoyed watching Psellus's slow transformation from a laughed at pen pusher to, well, I don’t want to give anything away…

I do have some minor quibbles with the ending of the triology. Considering how well rounded the other aspects of the book are I felt that the way the author handled the portrayal of a fourth race, a nomadic people who live beyond the desert, to be, well, I don’t want to say racist, but let’s just say I found it a little problematic. I also had a little trouble buying Ziani's plan, once the whole of it had been revealed, it seemed like some of the stuff he claimed to have figured out and done was just a little bit of a stretch. Lastly, while if you look at the three books as one very long tome is is all balanced perfectly, but if you take each book on its own merits then the second volume suffers from some pretty bad middle book blues.

All in all though I found this to a well written and extremely thought provoking trilogy which offers something very different to the plethora of other three book fantasy tales out there.(less)

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Jul 17, 2011 Douglas Summers.Stay rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I picked up the book because I thought it would be an alternate history about Leonardo Da Vinci. Instead it's a very original story about intrigue, manipulation and society, with a helping of engineering on top.
I found the character of the engineer implausible. I know mechanical engineers, and their deep insight into mechanical forces and linkages does not transform them into amazing streetfighters, capable of killing at least three fully armed soldiers barehanded. (I tried pretending he was Mac...more

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Aug 22, 2010 Erica rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Alma Baumwoll, Elizabeth Spahn

Shelves: sci-fi-fantasy

Reminiscent of the complex, political landscape of Martin's Game of Thrones, and just as full of multi-faceted and incredibly real characters. It's impossible to form a solid opinion about the characters, because like real people they keep surprising you with their complexities, their unexpected changes of heart and mind, their unpredictable behavior. One minute you think you understand them, the next you despise them, and once again find yourself relating to them. It's unsettling in a sophistic...more

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Apr 29, 2010 Paul rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: sciencefictionfantasy

First of a trilogy, this fantasy novel is about an engineer who starts a major war so he can be re-united with his wife and daughter.

Mezentia is a city-state that is the local technological superpower. They don’t let their technical knowledge get out to the surrounding kingdoms, which is how they keep their superiority. Mezentia is also a land of guilds, where technical specifications and tolerances were decided long ago. It is written into law that, for instance, a certain gear shall be no larg...more First of a trilogy, this fantasy novel is about an engineer who starts a major war so he can be re-united with his wife and daughter.

Mezentia is a city-state that is the local technological superpower. They don’t let their technical knowledge get out to the surrounding kingdoms, which is how they keep their superiority. Mezentia is also a land of guilds, where technical specifications and tolerances were decided long ago. It is written into law that, for instance, a certain gear shall be no larger than a certain size (down to hundredths of an inch) or a certain lever shall be a certain length, and no longer. Ziani Vaatzes, a talented engineer, breaks the rules, unintentionally, in building a mechanical toy for his daughter. He is sentenced to death by the Mezentian Council, accused of Abomination, and manages to escape with his life.

Vaatzes is picked up by the remnants of the army of Eremia, one of the neighboring kingdoms. They are struggling to get back home after attacking Mezentia, and getting slaughtered by superior Mezentian weapons. His offer to train Eremians in how to build the weapons that just decimated their army is politely declined, but Vaatzes is set up in a factory of his own by the Eremian equivalent of a venture capitalist. Vaatzes does not just start at the beginning, he has plenty of building, planning and training to do just to reach "the beginning." In Mezentia, tolerances and specifications are expected to be exact (anything less is not good enough), but in Eremia, the best Vaatzes can do is "pretty good." He and his employees have scoured the city looking for scrap metal to use in the weapons, but they will get the job done.

Meantime, the Mezentian Council has learned that Vaatzes is still alive, and is building weapons for the Eremians. The decision is made to invade Eremia, and wipe the entire race off the map. Nothing is more important than Mezentian technological superiority. Civitas Eremiae, the Eremian capital, is built into the side of a mountain, and is nearly impossible for an invading army to conquer. But, it does have a very secret, and very ancient, "back door."

Parker is an author who Gets It. This is a big novel, but it is an excellent piece of writing that will really keep the reader’s interest. I may just read the other two, equally large, parts of this trilogy just because the storytelling is so good.

(less)

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Dec 31, 2009 Russell Allison rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Liked it enough to buy rest of trilogy plus another book by same author.
Fits in the genre of "non Mass Market" fantasy. Uses and plays with the fantasy genre, but does so in ways that make it less broadly attractive to readers. Acquired taste.
Reminds you of Lies of Locke Lamora but nowhere near as good. Similarity is that there is a protagonist who clearly has a master plan, but you only get to see it slowly unfold.
Unique feature is that the protagonist is an engineer through and through. His ma...more

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Apr 16, 2009 Liviu rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: genre-fantasy, read_2009

When I finished The Company my first KJ Parker read the first impression was an utterly absorbing read that felt a complete waste of time at the end, so it got a snippy "first and last KJ Parker book" comment from me.

Well, I sometimes remark on others misjudging a book based on wrong expectations - and sometimes it's simply because the way a book is promoted - so it's just right to acknowledge that I had the same issue with The Company, wrong expectations.

So after several months passed since m...more

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Mar 10, 2011 Wendy Palmer rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011, ebook, fiction

Solidly grounded, realistic fantasy. The sense of menace permeating this book as the engineer's plans and matter of fact use of those around him come to fruition is truly breathtaking. An unusual feat, to have so many characters be so flawed and yet so likable in their own way.

The characters tend to express themselves in similar ways but their thinking and actions are different enough to make them distinct from each other. I would have liked more development on the duchess since at least 3 men a...more

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Aug 26, 2009 Milen Semkov rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Anyone tired of classical fantasy. Fans of historical fiction. Engineers (wink ).

Shelves: fantasy

1. INTRODUCTION

I'm writing this review for the trilogy as a whole rather than just the first book. Some series can be divided into standalone novels, but that one cannot - it's just like the machines K. J. Parker seems to love so much, the existence of the individual components is meaningless by itself, it's the bigger picture that matters. Also, I'll assume the author is a man just for practicality's sake.

The Engineer Trilogy inspires quite a wide range of feelings in the audience- I've seen pe...more

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Apr 24, 2011 Jon Collins rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy, saga

Devices and Desires is the first installment in K.J. Parker's Engineer Trilogy. This nontraditional fantasy series follows a disgraced engineer who is exiled from his society which is governed by the strictest precision of metrics. Ziani Vaatzes, the eponymous character, subsequently plots his intricate revenge against his homeland Mezentia by manipulating the complex political landscape.

Devices and Desires is, by no means, aiming for universal appeal. It is an oppressively bleak story which is...more

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May 06, 2010 David Thomson rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I got hooked by the idea that an otherwise unassuming engineery-type might, through the meticulous application of engineery-type algorithms and process analysis techniques, create a diabolical scheme to reunite with his beloved wife and child. The fact the scheme might necessitate the total destruction of whole countries is, from the engineer's perspective, a regrettable side-issue. "You go to war with the army you've got," D. Rumsfeld famously said. Or, to borrow a more abstract formulation wit...more I got hooked by the idea that an otherwise unassuming engineery-type might, through the meticulous application of engineery-type algorithms and process analysis techniques, create a diabolical scheme to reunite with his beloved wife and child. The fact the scheme might necessitate the total destruction of whole countries is, from the engineer's perspective, a regrettable side-issue. "You go to war with the army you've got," D. Rumsfeld famously said. Or, to borrow a more abstract formulation with a much better pedigree, "Give me a place to stand, and I will move the earth." It grows clear by the end of the book (the first volume in a trilogy) that the Reunification Machine the engineer has imagined is a horrible, bloody Rube Goldberg device composed of both machines and men.

Parker enjoys describing her imagined world. Mostly this is a good thing, but there is a certain amount of self-indulgent world-building going on. One entire chapter describes in minute detail the unfolding action of a committee meeting. No, really. The motion (carried, with no abstentions) actually has an important bearing on the plot, but you have to wonder if thirty pages of sub-committee intrigue was needed to ratchet the plot forward that tiny little bit.

I'm looking forward to Books #2 and #3, though I have the same misgivings about the Engineer's scheme as I did many years ago, chewing on the premise of Asimov's Foundation trilogy and wondering if I was going to be able to swallow: so much prescience without any margin for random human fuckups or unforseen changes in the weather? If you believe, as I do, that utterly unpredictable random events can upend any imagined causal chain, then your ability to buy into such a deterministic unfolding is diminished as the chain of perfectly anticipated events grows in links and length. Asimov's psychohistory is compelling in theory but clearly just a clever brand of snake oil in practice; the Engineer's machinations are similarly intriguing and unconvincing at the same time. Still -- maybe in the second book the whole scheme collapses due to unforseen circumstances and the clever little bastard is forced to improvise?(less)

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Jul 24, 2012 Jenieve Cumberland rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I found this book to be enjoyable, in a constant “jog up the hill” sort of way. Seriously, the story was enticing, and I admit that the cover was what attracted me in the first place (but hey, I always read the back too), but it’s just SO full of Fluff. And not the kind that’s soft and full of marshmellowy smut. I bet if you cut out all that extra tangle, you’d get a much thinner story that’s easier to pay attention to. The writer must have put a lot of time and research into what she was writin...more

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Dec 10, 2011 Jeff rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Interesting book. Not your typical fantasy. All of the character are flawed in some way like real people are. The "villain" is someone I really have to shake my head at. Really vile in a lot of ways.

One of the things I was kind of annoyed with is how "lucky" the villain was. Sure he knew how to gauge devices and parts of a machine, but how good would an engineer be at reading people? That bothered me. That he was able to read people, base his grand plan on hunches that people would behave like...more

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Oct 23, 2012 Sarah rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

What a strange book this was. I found this through a thread on metafilter from someone looking for books with "likeable bastards." Ziani, the main character, is almost a likeable bastard. He's an engineer who is sentenced to death for creating an abomination: a toy for his daughter with pieces that fall (GASP) outside of official Specifications.

The engineering aspect I found interesting, but not as interesting as K.J. Parker, who went on for entirely too long about measurements and mechanisms....more

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Feb 21, 2009 Kim rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is a fantasy novel but there is no magic, there are no mythical creatures, and there is no quest. In fact there aren't really even any heroes or villains. Needless to say, this isn't your typical fantasy novel. The setting is somewhat low-tech--there is no electricity, but otherwise the engineering of the day has worked marvels. One of the world's top engineers has broken a law--a minor infraction really, but still punishable by death. For love of his wife and daughter, he does not submit t...more

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Aug 24, 2011 Jerry Dowless rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

If fantasy is about suspending some of the rules that govern reality to see what happens, then the ones abated in K.J. Parker's "Devices and Desires" are not so much of physics or biology as political economy. In the same way other authors might produce for their readers' inspections orcs or chimerical conjoined beasts, Parker describes a civilization in which a single society (Mezentia) several hundred years prior to the novel's present achieved a level of technological sophistication in many w...more If fantasy is about suspending some of the rules that govern reality to see what happens, then the ones abated in K.J. Parker's "Devices and Desires" are not so much of physics or biology as political economy. In the same way other authors might produce for their readers' inspections orcs or chimerical conjoined beasts, Parker describes a civilization in which a single society (Mezentia) several hundred years prior to the novel's present achieved a level of technological sophistication in many ways analogous to the Industrial Revolution, then stopped cold in its development because of its commitment to a quasi-religious ideology that presupposed that the then-existing technology could not be improved upon. Moreover, adjacent to Mezentia are two duchies which, despite being involved in trade with Mezentia, are essentially late medieval societies run by nobilities that spend their time hunting and hawking, using gear, and following rules, that are precisely cognate with that would have been familiar to a fifteenth century English nobleman.

That this state of affairs asks "Devices and Desires" readers to rethink many assumptions they might bring about--just to start with--societies governed by self-professed rationalists, or about the self-perpetuating nature of technological development--is a great part of the pleasure "Devices and Desires" offers. In just the same way as a potential customer of Parker's main character Ziani Vaatzes might test his machines to insure they meet "S"pecification, the text seems to invite readers to test the plausibility of the alternate mode of historical development Parker describes. And actually, this gives the act of reading "Devices and Desires" an intense and unlikely intellectual thrill.

Now, for my tastes Parker's alternate world does not always pass this plausibility test. There is a very good reason why world history has few examples of technologically advanced mercantile-industrial powers annihilating the countries on which they depend to buy their exports. Likewise, the nature of competition between states and peoples seems to mitigate against a country ever gaining hegemony over others by means of technological development and then maintaining that hegemony over them while refusing to advance technologically further (for obvious reasons, this makes it vulnerable to its satellite-competitors). Even at the most basic level of the plot, it seems as if the Mezentines have had their plot-crucial bit of military technology (the scorpion) for a hundred years or more, their adversary the Eremians have been next door for that entire time, and the scorpion has had any type of prior use, it should be no surprise to the Eremians that they're then going to be faced with them, and it should have occurred long before now to the Eremians to try to get their hands on the first-rate weaponry.

But really, that Parker's text invites this level of questioning matters more than whether each answer the text presents are debatable. And the truth is that the text is working on more levels than this one anyway. "Devices and Desires" is at its heart about the ethics of technology. But the triumph of the novel is that it doesn't just understand technology with crude literalism as springs and pins and engines, but in the wider sense as any kind of problem-solving by means of tool-using. Specifically, "Devices and Desires" is about how Ziani Vaatzes constructs a machine to solve a problem for himself that includes in its components people and nations, connected not by pulleys or belts but his own conspiracy. This machine, Rube Goldberg-like in its complexity, seems to succeed to the extent it does precisely because it reduces people to objects and refuses to take account of any ethical duties that might be owed to them as people. But at the same time "Devices and Desires" does not hide the cost Ziani's success exacts from these people, and it's the way the novel delivers this message--not moralizing, not melodramatic, but clear-eyed and brutally efficient--that makes it ethically resonant.

At first glance, Parker's main characters seem exude a certain kind of tidy rationality. Even a decision to commit genocide is reached with the dry bureacratic precision with which a company might set the date for an IPO, and there's no evil that occurs that doesn't seem to have been run very carefully through a cost-benefit analysis. Thus, here there's very little of the hubris that animates the main character of "The Folding Knife" or the morbid violence of "The Company." In fact, as late as half-way through "Devices and Desires" I felt the novel cried out for a character fundamentally irrational or corrupt: if we live in a world with villains as cartoonish as Ghaddafi and his fellow despots, then it seemed Parker's fiction sacrificed too much realism by insisting on the absolute reasonableness of the people who make even the worst decisions in her alternate world. But it was only later that I noticed this was part of the novel's seduction: as the story progresses the effect is like the individual pieces of a mosaic resolving itself into the larger image, as individual rational moments and decisions stand revealed as part of arcs of grotesque self-deception and self-destruction. And such was Parker's skill in narrating her characters' descent that they convinced not only themselves, but us too.

Finally, I would be remiss to leave off without saying that Parker's writing style is marvelously efficient. In its understatement it shows a skill that is lacking in many authors who are far more ambitious and "experimental" in their use of language. One of the best results of this is that "Devices and Desires" is really a very witty and very quotable novel, and the characters' jokes at their own expense can in fact suffice to keep a reader going once the subject matter has turned as dark as pitch. There is however a slight problem this creates, given that the dialogue's sharpness is sometimes at odds with the speach patterns one would expect of courtly societies like what Parker depicts. And this problem is made worse by the scattered anachronisms one finds. Mostly, these are forgivable, especially considering the quality of the novel notwithstanding this issue, but it really is quite jarring to read medieval noblemen discussing "approval ratings" as if they just checked YouGov or HuffPo Pollster online before having their conversation. Throughout Parker's work, the inability to quite put one's finger on a precisely analogous time or place in our world's history for the events she's describing is part of the quirky charm, and part of the intellectual exercise. But sometimes she still needs to recognize when her novelist's license just gets pushed too far.

But all in all, it's an amazing novel nonetheless.(less)

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Mar 24, 2011 Trevor Pope rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'm still trying to come to terms with how I feel about this book. On one hand, I enjoy the writing quality and style. On the other, I found the plot something like a railroad, with the anticipated stops along the way. I found the characters one dimensional and lacking in motivation. However, I found the engineering to be fairly sound. This surprised me since I am a mechanical engineer, I expected a little fuzziness and hand-waving regarding metalworking, etc. The only complaint I had in this re...more

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Apr 27, 2009 Topher rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: plain-old-fantasy, 1st_books__kept_reading

I'm really ambivalent towards this one; heck, I really wasn't even sure what shelf to put it on. There aren't any supernatural elements, so I'm not sure fantasy is a good tag. There is a weird mashup of times. One culture seems to be Hindu, or maybe Sikh, another seems to be a cross between the Venetian Republic and the Moors, with maybe a bit of post-atheist Islam tossed in for flavor. I do like the idea of a culture centered on engineering, particularly with the non-subtle (but not over the to...more

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Jan 11, 2013 Gabriel R rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Devices and Desires started off very compelling, but after 100 pages into the book it becomes pretty obvious that the main character, Ziani, lacks real depth and motive for his actions (well, really ALL of the characters). 450 pages later, it's no different. The title and description of this book make it out to be about engineering and passion, devices and desires, but really this book is more about well described machines and their horribly boring makers. Ziani's driving force is supposed to be...more

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Jan 01, 2012 Ray Thompson rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This was definitely an intriguing book and a bit different than your average fantasy story. It could be a bit hard to follow at times, but strangely compelling. The "hero" is very logical, methodical in his desire to get what he wanted. He's more of an average person than your regular fantasy protagonist in that he isn't motivated by trying to be heroic.

I liked the book a lot, yet there was a little lacking, IMO. The cultures seemed to be two-dimensional and not entirely realistic. That seems a...more

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Nov 16, 2010 Sarah Skwire rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

'm reviewing this book in progress because I love it. It reminds me a bit of the George R. R. Martin series, _A Song of Ice and Fire_, because it has similarly complex story lines, character interrelationships, and political preoccupations. So far, it has... avoided introducing any dragons, however. Devices and Desires focuses on the relations among the (vaguely Renaissance-y) people and politics of a series of dukedoms--one of which has extreme mechanical technical expertise (though it has beco...more

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About K.J. Parker

K.J. Parker is a pseudonym. The author's true name has never been revealed.

According to the biographical notes in some of Parker's books, Parker has previously worked in law, journalism, and numismatics, and now writes and makes things out of wood and metal. It is also claimed that Parker is married to a solicitor and now lives in southern England. According to an autobiographical note, Parker wa...more

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“The world is full of annoyances, none more infuriating than a fool with a valid point.” — 3 people liked it

“The quickest way to a man`s heart,' said the instructor, 'is proverbially through his stomach. But if you want to get into his brain, I recommend the eye-socket.” — 2 people liked it

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Devices and Desires (Engineer Trilogy #1)

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