Your cart is currently empty!
2 Book Review: The Clockwork Dagger Novels by Beth Cato
The Clockwork Dagger
A healer heroine, a detailed magic/spiritual world and endearing animals – it’s like Beth Cato wrote this book just for me!
Octavia Leander is a medician – a mixture between a doctor, nurse and a faith healer. Deeply spiritual, Octavia combines her knowledge of herbal law with her ability to hear infection and wrongness in the body, praying to the Lady’s Tree, goddess of the healers, to bless her work and magically heal her patients.
War orphan, Octavia was saved from life on the streets by Miss Percival, who took her into her school and taught her the healing arts. Now an adult, Octavia is setting forth into the world to bring healing to the war torn country of Caskentia.
Seeking independence and blaming Caskentia for their blighted, dying land, the Wasters have been locked in a brutal war with the kingdom of Caskentia for decades. Despite the illusion of an armistice, spies from both sides are everywhere, including the Clockwork Daggers, the queens elite group of assassins.
What should have been an uneventful trip to start work in the town of Leffen, instead thrusts Octavia into a world of spies, intrigue, new friends, potential lovers and devoted animal companions.
The author has created a complex fantasy world that is believable at every turn. From the suffering on the streets, to the luxuries in the airships, to the spiritual life of the medicians, the world is lush and delightful. The steampunk elements add an extra level of interest to this engaging world.
The characters cover a diverse background of social levels, countries, occupations and belief systems, which provides deeper understanding of the world they come from, as well as enriching their development and providing conflict. Of particular interest are the gremlins – scientific chimeras that live around the cities and are considered pests by the majority of the population.
I loved this book. Octavia is caring, spiritual and strong. Her caring for all living creatures, especially saving the gremlin, Leaf, endeared her to me. I also appreciated her beliefs and prayer life.
The only slight negative in this book, and it is very slight, is the romance between Octavia and Alonzo. There was too much emphasis on his physical appearance for my liking.
The Clockwork Crown
All the steampunk, gremlin, Lady Tree awesomeness of “The Clockwork Dagger“, but this time turned up to 11.
Octavia Leander and Alonzo Garret are on the run, seemingly wanted by everyone, each side desiring to use Octavia’s growing powers to further their own agenda. They flee to Alonzo’s home country of Tamarania, a country rooted in science and devoid of magic. There they hope to find answers to what is happening to Octavia, and how to keep the crumbling peace between Caskentia and The Waste.
However, Octavia’s adventures see her unwilling return to Caskentia, a discovery of a centuries old secret, and a need for her to heal a disease that might endanger the Lady Tree herself.
Full of excitement, magic and intrigue, “The Clockwork Crown” is even better than its excellent predecessor.
The world introduced in “The Clockwork Dagger“, full of medicians, chimera and airships, was expanded to great effect in the second part of the duology. Learning more of Caskentia’s history added depth, and, combined with the central crisis at the heart of the plot, elevated the entire story to something greater than the sum of its parts.
While it was nice to see the secondary characters return (especially Leaf), two new characters – Tatiana Garret, Alonzo’s sister, and Rivka – stole the show. They are two of my favorite literary characters. I love Tatiana’s intelligence, strength and ability to get her way, while Rivka’s determination and quiet resolve makes her an admirable character. Two young women from very different backgrounds and with extremely different personalities, yet both realistic and attention grabbing.
Alonzo’s character was further developed in this book, and it was nice to see him as more than the love interest. The introduction of his family, and his home provided some much needed background.
The icing on the cake was the increased information about the Lady Tree, the spiritual source of healing for the medicians, one of my favorite elements from the first book. Without giving away any spoilers, this aspect of the story had me riding a roller coaster of emotions that included genuine fear for Octavia, before I reached the book’s satisfying conclusion.