What do you think?
Rate this book
Of Gilded Flesh
Clockmaker Josef Kronecker makes more than just clocks.
In his study in Salzburg, he crafts lifesaving clockwork appendages for clients, including a famous pianist, a count who loves to dance, and his very own assistant, Anna, who suffered a harrowing attack before coming to work at Kronecker’s Timepieces.
When Josef meets Klara, a beautiful party attendee, he’s entranced and soon becomes unknowingly entrapped in a web of lies. His infatuation positions him as the victim of a royal bully, who presents an impossible challenge and requests an unthinkable sacrifice should Josef run out of time.
While Josef falls for Klara and is held to a deadline he can’t possibly make, Anna keeps the shop afloat as she faces her past trauma, proving that the number of limbs does not make a person whole, but rather the will to live.
Sustaining life is Josef’s calling, but now it’s his life on the line. As the clock ticks down, he realizes that while infatuation is a powerful thing, love is deeper and sometimes goes unseen, and it seems adopting Anna’s unwavering will to live is the way to survive.
Honest, inventive, and both heartbreaking and heartwarming, OF GILDED FLESH is a captivating story about resilience and how much we have to live for.
In his study in Salzburg, he crafts lifesaving clockwork appendages for clients, including a famous pianist, a count who loves to dance, and his very own assistant, Anna, who suffered a harrowing attack before coming to work at Kronecker’s Timepieces.
When Josef meets Klara, a beautiful party attendee, he’s entranced and soon becomes unknowingly entrapped in a web of lies. His infatuation positions him as the victim of a royal bully, who presents an impossible challenge and requests an unthinkable sacrifice should Josef run out of time.
While Josef falls for Klara and is held to a deadline he can’t possibly make, Anna keeps the shop afloat as she faces her past trauma, proving that the number of limbs does not make a person whole, but rather the will to live.
Sustaining life is Josef’s calling, but now it’s his life on the line. As the clock ticks down, he realizes that while infatuation is a powerful thing, love is deeper and sometimes goes unseen, and it seems adopting Anna’s unwavering will to live is the way to survive.
Honest, inventive, and both heartbreaking and heartwarming, OF GILDED FLESH is a captivating story about resilience and how much we have to live for.
Unknown Binding
Published June 22, 2021
24 people want to read
About the author
Gordon Gravley
3 books9 followersGordon Gravley has been making up stories all his life. As a child, they would take the shape of rudimentary comic books, and Super-8 movies. As he was drawn to stage-acting in high school his stories became one-act plays, and then feature-length screenplays - none of which ever saw the light of the big screen.
It wasn't until his thirties that he finally decided to take the plunge, and like a real writer he made his stories into, well...stories. And just like a real writer, his efforts garnished multiple rejection letters. Twenty years later, those efforts would culminate into his first self-published novel, Gospel for the Damned.
Born in Phoenix, Arizona, Gordon moved around - California; Colorado; Alaska; Northern Arizona - before eventually settling in Seattle, Washington. Having called the Northwest his home since 1998, he doesn't expect to be moving elsewhere anytime soon. There, he continues to make up stories, write novels, and lives with his wife and their son.
It wasn't until his thirties that he finally decided to take the plunge, and like a real writer he made his stories into, well...stories. And just like a real writer, his efforts garnished multiple rejection letters. Twenty years later, those efforts would culminate into his first self-published novel, Gospel for the Damned.
Born in Phoenix, Arizona, Gordon moved around - California; Colorado; Alaska; Northern Arizona - before eventually settling in Seattle, Washington. Having called the Northwest his home since 1998, he doesn't expect to be moving elsewhere anytime soon. There, he continues to make up stories, write novels, and lives with his wife and their son.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 15, 2021
"People with Issues who sleep with other people even though they know it's a bad idea, because Issues" is a long way from the centre of what I enjoy, which is part of why this gets three stars from me. However, the pre-release review version I had from Netgalley also needed quite a bit of work. Like many authors (especially, but not solely, those based in the US), this author confuses nobility and royalty, and doesn't get terms of address for nobles - or, I think, churchmen - correct. The 18th-century Austro-Hungarian nobles in this book also seem to be able to commit crimes up to and including attempted murder against commoners with nobody even considering for a moment that they might possibly be held to account for it, and to be able to detain and execute them arbitrarily without process of law, which I have to say I found a bit difficult to believe. And the text has quite a few errors of vocabulary, fumbled idioms, and missing words in sentences.
The narration is, for no obvious reason, in present tense, except for one scene which drops, again for no obvious reason, into past before the present tense resumes.
And the deus ex machina (or possibly machina ex deus) near the end wasn't adequately foreshadowed, in terms of the level of magic displayed; up until then we'd just had clockwork that was ahead of anything possible today (let alone in the 18th century), but I was willing to accept that as the speculative element. The addition of another and much more powerful bit of outright magic didn't work for me, espeically since it was introduced more or less stealthily and without immediate explanation.
The ending, I felt, took a dark, brooding narrative in which several people with significant issues were creating their own tragedy and tied it up in a nice, neat happy ending with everything suddenly resolved. I'm not saying I wanted a tragic ending - I didn't - but it was a jarring change of direction nonetheless, and too abrupt.
What was good, though, was that there was some representation of disability - the clockmaker at the centre of the story crafts prostheses for several people, including himself, and there is at least some examination of what it's like to be disabled and make your way through life dealing with that every day.
It shows promise, but it doesn't show polish, and I felt some aspects of it hadn't been thought through enough or didn't ring true.
The narration is, for no obvious reason, in present tense, except for one scene which drops, again for no obvious reason, into past before the present tense resumes.
And the deus ex machina (or possibly machina ex deus) near the end wasn't adequately foreshadowed, in terms of the level of magic displayed; up until then we'd just had clockwork that was ahead of anything possible today (let alone in the 18th century), but I was willing to accept that as the speculative element. The addition of another and much more powerful bit of outright magic didn't work for me, espeically since it was introduced more or less stealthily and without immediate explanation.
The ending, I felt, took a dark, brooding narrative in which several people with significant issues were creating their own tragedy and tied it up in a nice, neat happy ending with everything suddenly resolved. I'm not saying I wanted a tragic ending - I didn't - but it was a jarring change of direction nonetheless, and too abrupt.
What was good, though, was that there was some representation of disability - the clockmaker at the centre of the story crafts prostheses for several people, including himself, and there is at least some examination of what it's like to be disabled and make your way through life dealing with that every day.
It shows promise, but it doesn't show polish, and I felt some aspects of it hadn't been thought through enough or didn't ring true.
August 7, 2021
Thnk you Netgalley for the eArc of this book. I'm leaving this review voluntarily.
Y'all first of all go ahead and read the book for the sake of novelty. Like it was good, perhaps it didn't stir any strong emotions but it was engaging.
There was intrigue, although I could predict what would happen I still enjoyed as my anxiety did allow me to read it through.
Okay I'll leave it here as I do not want to spoil too much so let me tell you that I liked the characters, the writing was done good so it was easy to read, the plot was as I said engaging, it went smoothly and didn't bore me. Oh and I really like the setting of the book, when there was royalty in the society and that there were some alternative approach for improving human lifes through not so simple mechanisms.
And Sir I liked the subtle dark humor and talks about life.
Y'all first of all go ahead and read the book for the sake of novelty. Like it was good, perhaps it didn't stir any strong emotions but it was engaging.
There was intrigue, although I could predict what would happen I still enjoyed as my anxiety did allow me to read it through.
Okay I'll leave it here as I do not want to spoil too much so let me tell you that I liked the characters, the writing was done good so it was easy to read, the plot was as I said engaging, it went smoothly and didn't bore me. Oh and I really like the setting of the book, when there was royalty in the society and that there were some alternative approach for improving human lifes through not so simple mechanisms.
And Sir I liked the subtle dark humor and talks about life.
January 28, 2022
Thank you to the publishers, author and NetGalley for the free copy of this book.
This was a quick, easy read that had a lot of promise. I didn't feel completely drawn in as reading, but also didn't really dislike anything. I would say, if you want something with a little bit of intrigue where everyone mostly ends up happy, give this a shot!
This was a quick, easy read that had a lot of promise. I didn't feel completely drawn in as reading, but also didn't really dislike anything. I would say, if you want something with a little bit of intrigue where everyone mostly ends up happy, give this a shot!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews