Charlotte Kersten

“Helping others is the only way we can prove we still matter.”

Year published: 2008

Category: Gaslamp/steampunk/urban fantasy

Summary: Mattie, an intelligent automaton skilled in the use of alchemy, finds herself caught in the middle of a conflict between gargoyles, the Mechanics, and the Alchemists. With the old order quickly giving way to the new, Mattie discovers powerful and dangerous secrets — secrets that can completely alter the balance of power in the city of Ayona. However, this doesn’t sit well with Loharri, the Mechanic who created Mattie and still has the key to her heart — literally! A steampunk novel of romance, political intrigue, and alchemy, The Alchemy of Stone represents a new and intriguing direction by the author of the critically-acclaimed The Secret History of Moscow.

My thoughts: I have been lucky enough to discover a number of new favorite books this year, and The Alchemy of Stone is one of them. I’ve never read anything quite like this before, and I would count myself lucky to read something like it again!

First and foremost among the reasons that I love this book is Mattie herself. She is one of my favorite protagonists of all time – I just love her so much. She is basically the biggest, most adorable sweetheart in the whole world who sees the good in others, always tries to be helpful and kind, and is particularly compassionate to fellow outcasts. She is curious and smart and determined to make her own way in the world, and her perspective as an automaton is so well written. I mean that in the sense that Sedia uses Mattie’s identity to explore notions of humanity and being othered, but also in the sense that there are so many unique details that really develop a complete sense of what it is like for her to have a mechanical body that can break down and functions so differently from a living body. A tiny detail that charmed me so much I still think about it all the time: “On the way, Niobe relented under Mattie’s pitiful stare (she extended her eyestalks for that purpose).”

Mattie’s complex, toxic relationship with her creator Loharri is another of the book’s strong points. Loharri is a really interesting and magnetic character, and it’s clear why Mattie is so confused about her feelings about him – on one hand he is a brilliant, charming man who literally gave her life and often treats her kindly, but on the other hand, he is capricious and selfish and full of an underlying darkness that manifests in how he is ultimately unwilling to see Mattie as a real person or relinquish his control over her life. The book states it really well: “he occasionally enjoyed making a show out of capitulating to her, but only because they both knew he held more power.” His benevolence and pet names only go so far – he’s willing to be nice while she does what he wants, but when she starts to exert her free will in ways that he doesn’t like, all bets are off and he reverts to treating her like an object, taking her apart and controlling her utterly.

Beyond the fact of Mattie’s creation, I love a lot of the other fantasy elements present – the mysterious, ancient gargoyles that are intrinsically tied to the city, the man who is fated to smoke opium to encompass the souls of the dead and live with them in his mind forever, the little blood homunculi that Mattie learns how to make with blood magic thanks to a friend from a different country…I could go on, but there are so many genuinely interesting and inventive elements that set this story apart from the other steampunk books I’ve read.

Speaking of the steampunk elements, The Alchemy of Stone also does a great job of capturing and exploring some of the themes that are central to the kind of gaslamp/steampunk books that I like. The book’s central conflict hinges on the rapid transformation of Mattie’s city through industrialization and the problems that arise because of it, the exploitation of the poor, and racist hostility towards outsiders from other lands. As I mentioned before, Mattie’s identity as an outsider is a great way of exploring the idea of who counts as a person, and that exploration is augmented by the struggles of race, class and modernization that are present too.

Only a few things didn’t work for me. It feels like there are a lot of conveniences to the story – everyone seems to know everyone important and relevant to the plot, and Mattie is constantly bumping into the characters who will best further the plot at any given time instead of deliberately seeking them out. I also think that the weakest part of the story altogether is the “romance” between Sebastian and Mattie. There is almost no buildup to the notion that they have feelings for each other, and it feels a lot to me like Sebastian doesn’t really care about Mattie at all and is instead just using her to stay safe during a volatile time. The sex scene is pretty unique, I will say, in that there is KEYHOLE ORAL. I actually like this scene a lot for the fact that it’s about Mattie reclaiming the pleasure that Loharri built into her without her consent; even disregarding the pleasure that he built into the process, Mattie finds Loharri using her key to wind her up to be a violation, and this is augmented by the fact that he will not give her the key so that she can be truly be free of him. So I like what the sex scene is all about, but I remain staunch in my opinion that Sebastian does not seem like he really cares about Mattie at all, and the romance was a big disappointment to me.

I simultaneously love and hate the ending, where Loharri dies and Mattie’s key is lost during his death, meaning that she knows that she is eventually going to shut down unless she can find the key. In the epilogue, narrated by the gargoyles who Mattie saved, she has shut down and the gargoyles are hunting relentlessly for the key. It’s like a knife to the heart!!!! But they’re 100% going to find the key and bring Mattie back to life and she’s going to be happy and free forever, okay???? OKAY.