The Watchmaker of Filigree Street: The extraordinary, imaginative, magical debut novel

Product Information

It is not summer, England doesn't have summer, it has continuous autumn with a fortnight's variation here and there.” A painting. There's a depressed Dutchman who does countryside scenes and flowers and things. It's ugly, but I have to maintain the estates in Japan and modern art is a good investment.”

Die Grundprämisse der Geschichte ist großartig. Es spielt in London und in Japan des ausgehenden 19. Jahrhunderts und es geht um Bombenattentate, einen englischen Telegrafisten und einen japanischen Uhrmacher, der die Zukunft sehen kann. Und einen mechanischen Oktopus, der vielleicht oder vielleicht nicht eine Seele hat. There's also Grace, a mad scientist who does very 'un-ladylike' things and her bff Matsumoto who's a smug Japanese guy who is quite obviously in love with Grace. Heaven forbid either of them admit it, though. *eyeroll* Secondly, do you enjoy magical realism and mystical settings. The author uses nineteenth century Japan for this book with Samurai, great Houses, nightingale floors and paper walls, and snow. Lots and lots of snow. Reading it made me want to curl up in front of a big log fire to stay warm. Re-read with a group of friends on Skype during Covid-19. As with the prequel, reading it with friends is just much more enjoyable and entertaining. I haven’t laughed this much in ages, just listening to our different opinions. And I still love this universe to death***

Recent Posts

Having really enjoyed The Watchmaker of Filigree Street I was really looking forward to be reunited with Thaniel and Mori. Curiosity about the watch leads Thaniel to the medieval buildings of Filigree Street and the mysterious Keito Mori, a high-born Japanese expatriate and mechanical genius The two become friends though Thaniel has a nagging feeling that Mori is somehow connected to the bombings. Neither element worked well for me. The ‘romance’ that supposedly develops between Thaniel and Grace wasn’t convincing and the plot thread about the identity of the bomb-maker became unnecessarily confusing.

Clever and engaging, this impressive first novel will reward both casual readers looking for a fun period adventure and those fascinated by the tension between free will and fate. Even though the end result was significant, I rather felt that all that manipulating and grand-scale scheming was overly elaborate for it.

Browse reviews by Century

Where I tend to start losing the thread and incur cramping of the cerebellum (which is only slightly less painful than a calf cramp in the middle of the night) is when time travel gets involved. Now, there’s not time travel going on here, per se, but one of our primary characters, the inscrutable Keita Mori, is clairvoyant, which amounts to the same thing, particularly in the sense that as he intimates to various characters (particularly our protagonist, Thaniel Steepleton) his knowledge concerning the course of future events and subtly suggests how they might change them, that, in turn, changes his knowledge and perception of what is to come, resulting in the need to shove a banana into your ear so it can get to your brain (because potassium helps with cramps, right?). Natasha Pulley (born 4 December 1988) is a British author. She is best known for her debut novel, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, which won a Betty Trask Award. The plot revolves around the watchmaker and the hunt for the bomber. Is Mori dangerous? Could he be an accomplice to murder? What are the implications for the present when someone knows the future? In an interview for Alt Hist magazine, Pulley says the arcane plot came to her through a combination of Dr. Who and the London Illustrated News. But it was ruined by weird (often glacial) pacing, insufficient editing, and mildly sympathetic or unsympathetic characters, who we never really get to know, with confusing and constantly shifting motivations.