New YA SF/Fantasy novel: Clockwork Angel

Clockwork Angel. What a great young adult science fiction/fantasy novel! Another Bestseller for Cassandra Clare. I don't know where these wonderful YA novelists are coming from, but this is another one destined to become a household name.

Clockwork Angel is the beginning of a new series called The Infernal Devices-- Book 1 of ... another trilogy? A longer series? Two? No clue on the dust jacket, but maybe Cassandra Clare's website can give us more clues (cassandraclare.com). I just don't have the time to check it out this week, what with all the mandatory reading I'm doing because of teaching and taking classes myself. But I always make time to get fun reading in, and this book did not disappoint.

Clockwork Angel has everything--magic, vampires, warlocks, demons, goblins, and other Downworlders. And a race new to Goth and Fantasy readers--the Nephilim, who protect mankind from all the evil races of the world. There is our 15 or 16-year-old heroine, Tessa Gray, who is...something else again. As in The Twilight Saga and the Hunger Games Trilogy, Tessa is a strong female character who becomes torn between loving two young gentlemen, Will Herondale and Jem Carstairs--although Tess questions just how gentlemanly Will really is. And then there's her beloved brother, Nate, who had sent her the first-class steamship ticket to come to London after their aunt died in New York City home.

Within the first several pages of the prologue, we learn something about the clockwork angel, which Tessa wears as a pendant. It is the only token she has of her mother, who died, along with her father, when Tessa and Nate were very young. That was when Aunt Harriet became their guardian. Aunt had loved them and had worked day and night at sewing and other jobs to maintain their New York apartment. They had been poor, but they were happy. Despite their poverty, Aunt never tried to sell Tessa's clockwork angel. Aunt had been very kind-hearted, and so made do in other ways. When he was old enough, Nate left New York for London under the invitation of their father's old employer. Nate sent Aunt and Tessa all sorts of little luxuries like chocolates from London until Aunt Harriet had died. Then he sent Tessa the first-class steamship ticket that brought her from America to England.

The setting of Clockwork Angel is Victorian London, and all Victorian principles apply. Tessa is a displaced American and an orphan searching for her brother. She was abducted from the dock when her ship landed in England by Mrs. Dark and Mrs. Black. She managed to escape the clutches of the two warlock sisters who force-taught her about the magical abilities Tessa did not know she possessed--the ability to Change into a person by holding an article they owned. The warlocks also had been preparing her, it turned out, to become the Magister's wife. Tessa didn't know anything about the Magister--or of his clockwork automatons that the sisters discissed--and she did not want to be imprisoned long enough to find out. After the escape, in part with Will's intervention and Jem's, Tessa meets the Nephilim and the real adventures start. This, an early chapter of the novel, is when it became difficult for me to put down the book.

Even though Ms. Clare beautifully portrays Victorian London, at the end of Clockwork Angel she thoughtfully notes the real and the conjured in the book's Victorian London setting. This is a nice touch and a great enticement for her readers to look up maps of old London and uncover where the changes are. Her website, linked above, has videos, extras, and exclusives--all the things that teens thrive on--about Clockwork Angel and Ms. Clare's other teen books, according to the publisher. Talk about inducement to read...

There is one other aspect of Clockwork Angel that I want to note: It can be read by 'tweens and neo-teens who have good vocabulary, because there is no sex--plenty of violence and gore, but no sex. In a few places in the book, sex is alluded to as assignations or trysts, but it is not among the youth in the book. Rather, it is the Downworlders who mostly involve themselves in the most debauched of such events--and it is not described. As I said earlier, Victorian principles apply. Charlotte Bronte would have been proud.

How often does a novel come out that is aimed at teens, has just enough romance but no sex (very Jane Eyre), and is still a great read for adults?


Next on my reading list: The Mortal Instruments Trilogy, by Cassandra Clare. What can I tell you--trilogies seem to be my thing!! :)