“…I don’t think anyone knows how to turn the wonder-engine off.”
The second book of The Clocktaur War series finds the characters right where we left them at the end of Book 1: still trying to find the source of the monstrous clocktaurs that have been rampaging across the countryside.
The little team consisting of Slate (convicted forger), Caliban (disgraced Paladin), Brenner (a smart-alec assassin), Learned Edmund (a very sheltered scholar), and the new addition of Grimehug (an intelligent badger-like creature called a gnole) need to find whatever it is that’s been making the clocktaurs and destroy it. It’s a mission that’s killed every other team who’s made the attempt, and it involves going to a city where someone very nasty has put out a contract on Slate’s life. And running away isn’t an option, because more than half the team have been branded with a magical tattoo that will eat them if they don’t complete the mission.
Welcome to Anuket City. Try to stay out of sight.
The first book took care of most of the heavy lifting as far as setting the scene and introducing the characters. In book two we hit the ground running and dive right into the quest to defeat the Clockwork Boys…
…which, oddly enough, really doesn’t feel like the most important part of the book. Don’t get me wrong, it’s hugely important to everyone to stop these village-flattening monsters, and the carnivorous tattoos on Brenner, Caliban, and Slate will give them a bite every now and then to remind them to focus on the mission. It’s just that every other part of the book feels even larger and richer than the the main plot.
The setting of Anuket City, for example. The buildings are a mishmash of architectural styles, there are churches for every known god, and the city’s crime element has their own sprawling underground market. Minotaurs stomp down the street next to people walking in a cloud of hummingbirds on tiny leashes. And all of that is before you get to the Artificer’s Quarter, where experimental machines pester the waiters, and explosions are a daily occurrence.
Everywhere he looked, Caliban saw clockwork. Doors did not swing, they ratcheted open. A display window crawled with oiled brass insects. One of the teapots at an outdoor café had climbed up the side of the building and clung there, exhaling steam.
The lives of the characters also spread out a lot wider than the main quest. We finally find out why Slate has been keeping clear of Anuket for decades (it’s only partially her fault, but she picked the very worst person to annoy). We already knew that Caliban was expelled from his order of demon-slaying knights when a demon possessed him, and now we learn how something like that could have happened. Learned Edmund is so devoted to his search for a missing scholar that at times he completely forgets he ever had a problem working with girls, and Brenner…well Brenner’s still Brenner: exceptionally good at being an assassin without missing a chance to make a clever remark.
“Do you ever miss?” asked Caliban.
“All the time. I missed that last guy.”
“You put a dagger in his eye.”
“Yes, but I was aiming for the other eye.”
The dynamic between the characters is a huge draw for me, not only because of the fast-paced dialogue (which is hugely entertaining, as it is in all of T. Kingfisher’s stories), but because everyone has their own outlook and their own secrets and all of that can be in direct conflict with everyone else’s.
Especially when you have the fact that Caliban and Slate are head-over-heels for each other, and neither of them are willing to admit it.
The will-they-or-won’t-they storyline is a standard trope, but it’s very sweet and believably frustrating here, since Slate resents the hell out of Caliban for being so knightly and protective and unwilling to take advantage of the woman he’s sworn to protect. (She also has her pride, and rejections hurt like hell.) She hasn’t quite realized that Caliban has been drawn to the diminutive forger since the first time she stood her ground in his prison cell. Unfortunately his soul is the last resting place for the rotting corpse of a demon that the priests of his order could kill but couldn’t exorcise, and he’s very aware that letting someone get too close could be a bad idea. No matter how much he finds himself wishing otherwise.
“It’s me, Slate!”
“Yes, I know.”
“The only visible bits of her scowled. “Damn. So much for my disguise.”
I would know you anywhere. I would recognize you at the bottom of a mineshaft on a moonless night, if I were deaf and blind.
This is not the sort of thing you can say out loud. Caliban was a little surprised that he’d even thought it.
He settled for, “It’s probably fine.”
The Author balances out some surprisingly dark sections with her usual talent for off-kilter laugh-out-loud moments, including one bit where Slate is being threatened with some strange-looking device and obsessing about what the hell the thing 
actually is (horse chestnut peeler? candied apricot shucker?). The story itself has everything you could wish for: a mad heist and a daring rescue (or should that be a daring heist and a very mad rescue), a little romance, and a plot twist that hit me right between the eyes.
Not everyone makes it out of this alive, and I’m hoping like anything that T. Kingfisher was serious when she said she may want to one day revisit this setting. I definitely need to see more of a world where gods have a flavor, danger smells like rosemary, and paladins have an endless supply of handkerchiefs.