Department: Childrens, 9-12 yrs
Genre: Sci-fi/adventure
Publisher: Chicken House Books
I am going to start by saying that I have a long-standing admiration of Chicken House Books. They have been behind some of our most successful and fantastic children’s books of the month – A Place Called Perfect, Who Let the Gods Out?, Beetle Boy to name but a few. They seem to understand that children have an extensive emotional capacity and that they don’t need to be belittled with gentle stories that stroke their heads. Kids are robust. They can handle it, and they enjoy it.
Anyway, that over let’s move on to the actual review.
It is set in a futuristic world in which robots, or mechanicals, are a normal part of everyday life BUT there are four golden rules which must be obeyed in their construction:
THE LAWS OF MECHANICALS
- Only licensed and registered engineers have the legal right to animate mechanicals.
- It is forbidden to confer life and sentience upon any raw material which conforms to the standard agreed dimensions of an adult or ‘proper’ human being.
- All mechanical devices conferred with ‘life’ must be created using the principles of basic propulsion and the mechanism of glyphs.
- It is strictly forbidden to confer life upon a mechanical using the principles of refined propulsion, otherwise known as ‘ensoulment’.
… Checkhov’s gun, anyone?
The story follows Christopher, a ‘Proper’ boy, a boy of flesh and bone who was orphaned in a fire. He now works as an apprentice engineer on a junk yard with the eccentric mechanicals who are his best friends. When Christopher has a near-fatal accident, his whole life is turnedupside down as everything he has taken for granted turns out to be nothing but a pack of lies… So the rag-tag team of Christopher and co. embark on a convoluted and dangerous adventure to uncover the truth and discover what friendship, loyalty, and love mean along the way, as well as what it means to be Proper.
This book is an amazing insight into what it means to be human – just because you don’t have a heart and lungs does that make you any less real than someone who does? I devoured it in two days because I was so intrigued by the unique plot and felt so caught up with these incredibly real characters and their plight. Barring very young children (below 7 years old) I would recommend this book to anybody. The amount of heart, and emotional depth is staggering – I cried at the end!
I don’t give star ratings on my reviews, and in this case I think it’s a good thing because I think it does the book a disservice. I honestly can’t rave about it enough, so I’ll stop now. But seriously, read it.
The Graduate 