My rating:

add to my books

The Engine's Child

by Holly Phillips

2.85 · rating details · 34 ratings · 14 reviews

From acclaimed author Holly Phillips comes a major work of visionary fantasy in the vein of Jeff Vandermeer and China Miéville. As richly detailed as it is evocative, the vivid prose of this ambitious novel illuminates a lushly imagined world poised on the brink of revolution.

Lanterns and flickering bulbs light the shadowy world of the rasnan, the island at the edge of a w...more

Paperback, 400 pages

Published November 25th 2008 by Del Rey (first published 2008)

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

More…

There is a good chance some of your friends read this book. Sign in to see!

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

Last Argument of Kings by Joe Abercrombie

2008 DGLA Fantasy Book Nominees

86th out of 88 books — 160 voters

Books With The Best Blend Of Sci-fi and Fantasy

62nd out of 119 books — 36 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 103)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

Jun 18, 2011

Danielle L. rated it

I ordered a collection of “new to me” authors recently, and Holly Phillip’s “The Engine’s Child” was one of them. I closed the finished book with that peculiar sense of having admired but not loved it. “The Engine’s Child” has virtues weighed down by a single fault so significant I’m not inspired to look for more of the author’s work.

For virtues, let’s say up front “The Engine’s Child” was an original in a genre far too freighted with unoriginality. I point to C. J. Cherryh’s d...moreI ordered a collection of “new to me” authors recently, and Holly Phillip’s “The Engine’s Child” was one of them. I closed the finished book with that peculiar sense of having admired but not loved it. “The Engine’s Child” has virtues weighed down by a single fault so significant I’m not inspired to look for more of the author’s work.

For virtues, let’s say up front “The Engine’s Child” was an original in a genre far too freighted with unoriginality. I point to C. J. Cherryh’s dense works of politics on alien worlds as its closest cousin. Thank goodness, no Tolkien cast-offs or pseudo-Middle Ages swords and sorcery here.

We begin with a watery world where humanity crowds on minuscule footprints of land, threatened by endless rains. The desperate in this hierarchical, Hindu-inspired society live on filthy tidal flats, specifically forbidden the comforts of technology. The elite houses inhabit great towers made livable by the electricity and running water denied the mud-rats. Others inhabit skimpy scraps of land that pass for country, taxed to death to support the tower-dwelling upper crust. The priest-scholars of the many gods form another group, providing the secondary virtue of celibacy in this hugely overpopulated world.

The young protagonist Moth has, alas, failed her priestly vows of celibacy. If only that was her worst sin. Unfortunately, she’s up to her ears in schemes, betrayals, double-dealing and ambitions.

Raised up from the tidal flats to an acolyte’s position by Lady Vashmarna, she’s become the great lady’s secret agent. Vashmarna’s engineers operate the electrical plant and technology that provide life to this flooded world.

Vashmarna has ambitions. She wants to build a great ship to search out new land. She’s building the engine for that ship in secretly in the tidal flats, because the conservative ruler, the shaudah, distrusts such ambitions. So, too, does Lord Ghar, who belongs to another secret society. The Society of Doors schemes to return through a magic door to the world humanity left behind (or fled from).

Both Vashmarna’s engine and Ghar’s door depend on shaping a world-energy called mundab. Moth alone has the gift to shape this energy into the magic engine Vashmarna and Moth’s desperate compatriots desire. Is Moth building the engine for Lady Vashmarna, or for her fellow tidal mud-rats, who long to escape in the hijacked ship, or for Moth’s own ambitions?

Phillips shapes a cohesive, original and believable world. But now I mention the fatal flaw. Moth, the chief protagonist, is a brat, a constant liar, and an arrogant schemer. She shafts everyone, including her conscientious and far too gullible lover. She’s unpleasant, wilful and spoiled. And you’d probably prefer not to know just about everyone else in this book, too, except for that poor shafted lover.

So read this book if you enjoy a politically dense, original fantasy written in poetic prose. If you prefer to bond with likeable characters, forget it. I wasn’t rooting for anyone except the clueless lover, who pays the price of loyalty and dies, of course. Try this again, Ms. Phillips, with a protagonist we want to spend time with.
(less)

· see review

Dec 02, 2008

Liviu rated it

Shelves: series_reading, genre-fantasy, 2008_release_read, review_fbc, top_25_2008_novels

Wonderful fantasy in the new weird tradition. It reminded me a lot of Thunderer by F. Gilman in setting/plot, though we have an island instead of a city, a sea-going ship rather than a flying one, but there are a lot of thematic similarities between the two, so if you liked the superb Thunderer, try this one too and the odds are you will love it.

Humanity lives on an island - Rasnan, world of exile - in the middle of a seemingly endless ocean, after escaping from a destroyed/decayi...more

· see review

Jul 07, 2010

Jillian rated it

Recommends it for: lame arrogant people

I kept thinking this book would get better, but it didn't. I got stuck reading the whole thing.

I hate when books begin like this one - full of jargon and no explanations. The reader gets thrown in and tries to swim in the lack of meaning. Most books that start this way clear themselves up fairly quickly, but this one does not. There is even a glossary in the back for all of the non-standard vocabulary, but by the end of the book I still wasn't clear on what meant what.

...more

· see review

Apr 07, 2010

Kim A rated it

I liked the premise of the book. An unfamiliar world, mysterious magical force, an exotic Indian/Asian flavor to the background. Very interesting characters and dynamics.

However, I couldn't really enjoy the book because I never really felt that a clear setting was established--until the very end of the book, when I could finally start to make sense of some of world around the characters (and it no longer mattered much).

Some authors can approach their setting indirectly, w...more

· see review

Mar 28, 2009

Elizabeth Hunter rated it

Shelves: sf

It's always interesting to read science fiction extrapolated from a different culture than my own. The setting is a colony descended from Indian forebears and stranded on a water planet with too little land for their growing population. The tension between religion and technology, between different paths back and an incomprehensible path forward, provides the plot's momentum. The lack of exposition made it a difficult book to get into and the ending felt left open for a sequel and all the cha...more

· see review

Nov 06, 2009

Margot rated it

Shelves: fantasy, 2009

Generations ago, on an island world surrounded by endless oceans, an entire people took refuge when their world was destroyed by technological excess. Now their island is overpopulated, their foodstocks are diminished, and it never ceases to rain. Their only hope is to develop the technology that will allow them to properly explore the vast ocean in search of new land--technology strictly forbidden by law and custom.

Holly Phillips' The Engine's Child begins with an amazing premise, b...moreGenerations ago, on an island world surrounded by endless oceans, an entire people took refuge when their world was destroyed by technological excess. Now their island is overpopulated, their foodstocks are diminished, and it never ceases to rain. Their only hope is to develop the technology that will allow them to properly explore the vast ocean in search of new land--technology strictly forbidden by law and custom.

Holly Phillips' The Engine's Child begins with an amazing premise, but unfortunately falls far short on delivery. Her prose are admirable; this is certainly a fantasy book bordering on the literary. But I felt like Phillips sacrificed character for prose. Throughout the story, I never felt an affinity toward Moth. The character I felt most sympathetic toward was Lady Vashmarna, though still only distantly.

In addition, Phillips' prose never gave me a clear vision of the world in my head. It rained. The towers were white. There was a lot of mud. That's about all I got. Such tightness of prose detracted from the world-building necessary to create a rich backdrop for the story, and the whole thing suffered for it. Instead of actual descriptions of place, she filled the book chock-full of italicized words like rasnan, demesne, janaras, mundab, and purdar (to name only a few). All of these accompanied by no words of explanation whatsoever. Not even, really, through context. It would have been nice to know there was a Glossary before I was half way through the book. The book should have led with the Glossary. And when anything slightly magical/technological happened, the prose got so vague as to leave me wondering if Phillips herself even had any idea what these things she was writing about were supposed to look like.

Consider this manifest of which the reader has no concept to relate it to for the entire first section of the book:
"A curve of darkness traced by the rain's stolen light, a rounded edge etched against the shadow of other edges, a sliding gleam of water caught and diverted by something too large and clean-lined to be human...[she:] could only guess at a shape. Wheels tangled within wheels? Whorls of glassy obsidian, dark coiled shells...
"It rolled away from her down the passage with a smooth, complex, yet awkward motion, a concatenation of too many gears spinning one within the next, dimly illuminated by the rain-caught reflection of the generation station's distant lights. The manifest rolled like a boatload of barrels tumbling in the surf..."

So...what? Is it a spirit, a machine, a ghost, a monster? You won't know until more than one hundred pages later, despite the fact that manifests continue to be seen, thought, and spoken about throughout.

I should mention, however, that I almost gave the novel three stars because it gets a lot better by the end. (Once you've gotten over the constant vagueries and confusion of the first three quarters of the book.) This slightly disappointing novel will not stop me from exploring more of Phillips' works in the future.(less)

· see review

Jan 17, 2010

Catherine Siemann rated it

Shelves: book-group-books

I didn't actually finish this one, so normally I would delete it from the list, but it's a book group book, plus I've gotten a question about it, so . . .

Another book I really wanted to like. I like the idea of a science fiction novel based in South Asian culture, and I liked that the author dropped us into the middle of the world without a lot of explanation. I even liked the main character, Moth.

But there wasn't much in the way of plot, and characters weren't partic...more

· see review

May 06, 2009

Ben Babcock rated it

Shelves: canadian-author, 2009-read, fantasy, via-io9, owned, steampunk

In The Engine's Child, Holly Phillips has created a rich and interesting world where everyone quite literally lives on an island in a vast ocean. The intrigue among the three main factions--the conservatives who insist on keeping with traditional ways, those who want to find a way back to the land of their ancestors using magic portals, and those who want to master the ocean and find new land--is what fuels most of the story. Unfortunately, the end result left me feeling like Phillips failed t...moreIn The Engine's Child, Holly Phillips has created a rich and interesting world where everyone quite literally lives on an island in a vast ocean. The intrigue among the three main factions--the conservatives who insist on keeping with traditional ways, those who want to find a way back to the land of their ancestors using magic portals, and those who want to master the ocean and find new land--is what fuels most of the story. Unfortunately, the end result left me feeling like Phillips failed to exploit the full potential of her beautiful world.

It's not the unfamiliar terms--mostly honorifics--that fazed me; Phillips handily included a glossary. Rather, there are some unfamiliar concepts that never get explained in a satisfactory manner. The protagonist, Moth, is uniquely attuned to the mystical force called the mundab, which also happens to be the name of the unending ocean that surrounds the island. She works with an expansionist group to build an engine that somehow channels this mundab into energy to power a vessel. The nature of the mundab and the shadowy manifestations associated with it remains vague, at least to me, for the entire book.

Similarly, Phillips' descriptions of the setting never satisfied me. Although I'm interested in the social structures of this world she's created, I have a very poor idea of how it looks and is geographically organized. While I'll never say that maps are essential to fantasy books, I wouldn't turn one down, especially not for this book. How big is the island? Where are these towers located in "the bay"? A simple map showing me the relative locations of various settings, such as the bastion and the tidal, would have gone a long way toward drawing me into the events in the book. The lack of sufficient description detracted from my enjoyment of the drama taking place in those settings.

Few of the characters held my attention for very long. None are well developed beyond a few of the main characters, such as Moth and her mother. I never got a clear sense of who the antagonists were supposed to be, and even the characters who I thought were the antagonists, such as Lord Ghar, had pretty flimsy motivations, at least from what I learned about them.

Indeed, the deficiencies of The Engine's Child all stem from what seems like a lack of depth from Phillips. Where we require specificity and analysis, we get only surface details. Exposition, which is deadly when overused, is fatally underused, and the story suffers as a result. Lacking any real history beyond a rebellion vaguely relevant to the plot, the world stands only in the present, which makes me care much less about its future.

By far the most interesting part of The Engine's Child is the world in which it is set. The island's society exists because of a tenuous and brittle social contract, and the machinations of various characters threaten that social contract's survival. I want to be immersed in this world and experience the hardships of the poor in "the tidal" and the farmers in the hadras (countryside). Ultimately, however, Phillips failed to draw me into her world; I felt always like an outsider, watching shadows of characters acting out a pantomime on the cave wall.(less)

like 1 like

· see review

Jan 17, 2009

Heather rated it

what i am finding is that the more sick i get of formulaic fantasy/sci-fi, the more tolerant i am of less exciting writing if the influences are non-standard. this book seems to draw upon indian/asian cultural influences, and while the story and characters are not all that compelling, it's not a bad read, and the culture is interesting enough to keep me interested.
why is there not more excellently written, culturally diverse science fiction out there??! or where do i need to look to find i...more

· see review

Mar 11, 2009

Lisa rated it

Beautifully written and evocative. Strong female characters. I loved this book and I look forward to more from this author.

· see review

Dec 28, 2008

Joe rated it

Shelves: endeavour-award

I think there's a good story in here, but I'm too held up by the made up words that are never really well defined.

· see review

Feb 18, 2009

Ken rated it

http://nethspace.blogspot.com/2008/12/en...

· see review

Sep 26, 2011

Marion Robinson rated it

Shading into weird, but a haunting story.

· see review

Nov 17, 2011

Wraith Tate rated it

Shelves: fantasy

There's a difference between interestingly vague and aggravatingly vague.

This book was of the second variety. It seems to throw vocabulary at you with very little explanation, and it's as if the author expects you to be able to understand exactly what's going on with a minimum of information. I don't enjoy books like that. Which is why this book only gets two stars. I also found it very aggravating that the text would randomly switch from present to past tense. It was jarring.

· see review

Jan 19, 2012

Nilchance marked it as to-read

Jan 14, 2012

Lee Brindley rated it

Jan 02, 2012

Mark rated it

Dec 31, 2011

Helen Clarke rated it

Nov 17, 2011

Loren Foster marked it as to-read

Oct 24, 2011

Rebecca rated it

Nov 18, 2011

Willow rated it

Shelves: speculative-fiction

Oct 19, 2011

Merrua marked it as to-read

Oct 13, 2011

Danielle added it

Oct 05, 2011

Abby rated it

Sep 18, 2011

Laura added it

Shelves: fantasy

Sep 15, 2011

Aerulan marked it as wishlist

Jul 23, 2011

Mary Stephanos added it

Jul 07, 2011

Amy marked it as to-read

Jul 04, 2011

Bix marked it as locus

May 28, 2011

Suseela marked it as to-read

« previous 1 2 3 4 next »

Science Fiction Fantasy

3 users

Sci Fi Fantasy

2 users

Science Fiction

2 users

Weird Fiction > New Weird

2 users

See top shelves...

Readers Also Enjoyed

Books by Holly Phillips

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Pin It

Trivia About The Engine's Child

No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »

title link	preview: The Engine's Child
avg rating	preview: The Engine's Child Goodreads rating: 2.85 (34 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4099311-the-engine-s-child?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320453974m/4099311.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4099311-the-engine-s-child?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]The Engine's Child by Holly Phillips[/url]

The Engine's Child

Friend Reviews

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topic
Discuss This Book

combine
Other Editions (2)

Genres

Readers Also Enjoyed

Books by Holly Phillips

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website

Trivia About The Engine's Child

The Engine's Child

Friend Reviews

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topicDiscuss This Book

combine Other Editions (2)

Genres

Readers Also Enjoyed

Books by Holly Phillips

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website

Trivia About The Engine's Child

new topic
Discuss This Book

combine
Other Editions (2)