Jay Lake's "Mainspring" is a book that I have trouble comparing to anything.

It's the tale of a boy working as a clock makers apprentice until he gets a message from a metal angel telling him to rewind the spring that keeps the earth moving.

That's the sort of sales pitch that would get me to read just about anything, but the depth of Lake's idea and the extent to which he plays it out is the real show here.

The entirety of the world in "Mainspring" is clockwork. There's a series of gears visible in the sky that astute clockmakers can tell time by. The equator is a giant series of metal teeth that connect to the wider ring that keeps it orbiting the sun. They worship a metal Jesus who died on a gear-like variant of the crucifix. This is steam punk on a scale I didn't think any had the ambition to try. Having world that seems to have been created with a clock as its inspiration really helps sell the setting.

This is all told through brief, concise prose that wraps around huge ideas with an amazing amount of grace. At no time was I uncertain about what was happening or how the story was progressing, which is pretty impressive for a story taking place in an alternate Victorian setting where America is still a colony and dirigibles are a viable means of transportation.

If there is a weakness to Lake's first book, it's the structure. Sometimes I actually felt breathless because the story goes and goes and rarely stops, like the narrator isn't stopping to take a breath. As an adventure story, this has it's good qualities, but at times I wanted him to linger on the great settings he'd created instead of moving on to the next amazing set-piece.

Lake spent years writing a small library-worth of short stories, so his ease with prose makes sense, along with wobbly, uneven structure of the overall plot. As far as I can tell he has nowhere to go but up, and since the sequel was recently released, it looks like he's dedicated to tackling more angles on his ambitious world. I'm certainly looking forward to more.