The Stranger rides across a surreal landscape/dreamscape, the Escapement, in search of a magical flower that will save the life of his son. In a parallel world, a man sits by the hospital bed of a comatose child on life support. Occasionally the Stranger is catapulted into that unbearably sad world… or is it the other way around? The title is double edged. The Escapement is not just a world in which the Stranger can take refuge, but an escapement is a mechanism which regulates clockwork, and indeed the clock is ticking as the search for the flower is hijacked by events taking place in a Western style landscape. Expect clowns. This novel manages to be both lyrical and downright weird while heading for, perhaps, the most fitting conclusion.

Grief, Denial, A Struggle Against Fate -- and Dark Humor.........

The Escapement is either an alternate, parallel, actual world, or it's the dream world created by a Father who has suffered a psychotic break because of the mortal illness of his young son. The beauty of this book is that you don't know which one of those options is true, either one could be true, and it really doesn't matter, because read either way the book is a complete success as either a bizarro adventure or as a meditation on life and death.


We follow the Father/Stranger as he travels the Escapement, like the Man with No Name from the Clint Eastwood "Dollars Trilogy". The comparison is acknowledged by the author and intentional. It is upon this frame that the rest of the novel is arranged. I'm pretty sure that "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" didn't have clowns, veiled references to Gilgamesh, a recreation of the Titanomachy, or a lot of insider circus jokes and references.


More to the point, for all of its bizarre asides, riffs, and set pieces, and for all of its deadpan humor and wry wit, and despite the surreal juxtaposition of clowns and western tropes, this is ultimately a book about love, despair, grief, and the painful challenge of letting go of a loved one. This is a book that will grab you and dazzle you.


(Please note that I received a free ecopy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)

I'm a huge fan of Lavie Tidhar and I'm convinced he cannot write a bad or boring book. This book is exciting, dreamlike, and well written.
Fabolous world building, excellent storytelling and plot/character development.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

A wonderfully bittersweet and weird af tale. It's slow going reading at first while trying to figure just what the hell is happening, but once you get into the groove it is hard to put down. I wish it were longer, and with the rather abrupt ending, I definitely feel like there was more story to tell.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC

The Stranger is a gunslinger on a quest, riding through the dreamlike lands of the Escapement. Dangers abound, from symbol storms and wild clowns, to giant stone Colossi walking the lands, and everywhere ‘magic’ swirling in the aether.

In a parallel world, a man sits beside a hospital bed, detached from reality and hoping for a miracle.

The premise of this book was so appealing, fantasy and wonder and all the fractured mirror images of the real world as if seen through a child’s eyes. And the western elements of the nameless gunslinger riding through increasing peril – cool!

Alas, the translation of the ideas left me pretty cold. This is ‘literary fiction does fantasy’, and I’m just not a fan: it feels to me like a lot of adjectives but very little substance.

I did really like the way the two worlds existed side-by-side, and the moments of blurring. However, neither world felt appealing: one of hospitals (I’ve had too much of those in the real world of late, thank you – hence the very long gap in my reading!) and dying children, and the other of tragic, enslaved clowns and largely unpleasant characters. I thought most of the cool stuff, be that magic that left people with charmed items embedded in their being, or wars being played out by god-like entities in the background of ‘normal’ lives, got far far too little focus or explanation.

The afterward mentions a dozen or more influences, and while there’s nothing wrong with that, I’m not convinced the author added enough to the story beyond mashing this disparate imagery together and expecting the reader to be impressed enough. Overall it was okay – well-written and superficially interesting – but I wasn’t particularly engrossed, or impressed.

I loved, loved, LOVED this book. It's a great atmospheric, circus, horror. It's a dark read full of great prose, and heavily refrencing other media I am a big fan of. However, it stands on it's own and is an amazing escape for fans of fantasy.

**Thank you to NetGalley and Tachyon Publications for the free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review**

I absolutely adored this book!! Think The Dark Tower but a lighter, more laid back read. The Escapement featured a crazy, trippy, Salvador Dali feeling world that mirrored the real world.

The Stranger, our main character, shifted back and forth between both worlds, while trying to complete an epic quest in The Escapement. The world building in this book was insane and I found myself wanting more book so that I could discover even more.

This is definitely adult fantasy, featuring a lot of gore, violence, and super scary clowns (of all shapes and sizes….) I’ve never been especially afraid of clowns but I will think twice about them from now.

Half a star off because the book was leading to a super satisfying ending that didn’t turn out the way I had hoped. I still loved this book and look forward to checking out more from this author in the future!

This book is for you if you like parallel worlds, fantasy, Westerns, and books involving circuses/magic/etc.

How weird can we get?! Combining genre elements from just about every genre under the sun, Lavie can get very weird indeed. This Carnivale caper is genius, fun, and again, very weird.

As a father waits in a hospital by the side of his terminally ill son, he escapes to a fantasy world, where he journeys in the hope of finding a miraculous flower thst may save his child.

Sadly, this did not engage me as much as Tidhar's previous works. I cannot fault the writing, as the author's world-building is extraordinary and so very original, each paragraph filled with so many allusions to other books, films, cultures and religions, yet re-made here anew, that it will have your head spinning in wonder like your first night-time visit to a circus. And his language and turns of phrase are alternately poetic and humorous, surreal and barbaric.

Technically, this is a brilliant work from a supremely intelligent and creative author; however, I just could not engage with it emotionally. I've been trying to find justifiable faults with the story, but I cannot, it is as near perfect as it could be. I think it's that I just don't like clowns or, at least, seldom seen and few in number is my comfort zone. There were just too many of them in this for my taste.

The ending, however, was intensely moving without being mawkish, and worth the journey. Tidhar is a poet and a philosopher; in the guise of writing "mere" fantasy, he gives us fundamental human truths, surely the benchmark of all truly great art.

My thanks to Netgalley and Tachyon publications for the ARC of this beautiful book. (Cover artwork is stunning too.)

Like Central Station, Tidhar brings his imagination and gorgeously intelligent writing to his newest novel, The Escapement.

While I found myself a bit lost at times in the complex plot, I was blown away by the level of depth and intricacy of the world building. Tidhar's world building shines in a way unlike any author I have ever read. From wanderings in clown country to references from Hebrew and Russian mythology, and even the Wizard of Oz, The Escapement is the story of a man grieving a terminally ill child and the places his grief take him. As readers, we jump back and forth between the fantastical world of The Escapement to The Stranger's "real" life. His fantastical world is made up of images and scenes from his present and past reality- but twisted and turned inside out.

Since this is a book rich in ideas and the creation of a bizarre and original world, I found it harder to connect to the characters. The writing style, while visually descriptive, does not focus as much on the characters' internal thoughts and backstory as I would have liked. Also, I had some issues with the amount of characters who would pop up, narrate a story, and then disappear for the rest of the book.

However, The Escapement is so rich in metaphor, allusions and satire, it's a work of fantasy/sci fi that will continue to bring its readers new and interesting ways to read the story each time they come back to it. I'd highly recommend The Escapement if you like complex world building, philosophical musing, literary allusions and a well-crafted story.

* Thank you to Tachyon Publishing and NetGalley for an ARC copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Escapement is the latest novel from award winning Israeli science fiction/fantasy writer, Lavie Tidhar - an author whose work I have barely touched in the past (I've read his Central Station, which I didn't particularly love). Still, Tidhar's work has always been highly praised by people I trust, so I was interested in taking another shot at it.

The Escapement is a really interesting short novel, although it's one that I have a hard time getting a full handle on. The book is one part the story of a father dealing with the imminent death of a child, one part Dark-Tower like gunslinger in a fantasy western setting centered around clowns, and one part set of stories based upon historical and folk stories of various cultures. It's a story about a single moment of happiness, and the longing for it to last forever rather than going away. I'm not quite sure it all worked for me, or that large parts didn't go over my head, but it's certainly worth a read.

-------------------------------------------------Plot Summary---------------------------------------------------------
In one world, a boy lies sick in a hospital bed, and a man grieves and frustratingly clings to their memories of happiness, and longs for the chance to bring back the child one more time.

In another world, The Escapement, The Stranger wanders a land full of clowns, where Colossi and Shadows wage war upon each other through human pawns, and where the landscape can turn into a shifting maze around you if you're not careful. The Stranger, armed with his guns, searches for the Ur-shanabi, a flower also known as the Plant of Heartbeat, which could save the boy.

But the Escapement is a land full of strange dangers, filled with beings native to the land and from the other world entirely, with the Substance between worlds being used in many different and deadly ways. And so the Stranger will find his journey interrupted repeatedly by the stories of others, of killers and clowns, Colossi and shadows, of Arcana and carnies, which will test him time and time again, as the clock ticks down on the moments left in the boy's life....
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The Escapement is a short novel, but it's filled with ideas, stories, and two connecting worlds - one that is recognizably ours, and then that of the Escapement itself. The two worlds are of course utterly intertwined, with the unnamed man in our world, grieving for his child, spending increasing amounts of time in the Escapement, looking for a flower that can save his boy's life. The people of the Escapement depend increasingly on "Substance", which floods the area, and a hole of it leads directly into the other "real" world (you can get the metaphor there), and which can also be used to make narcotics among other things. But whatever else the Escapement is, it's also a world based upon the last happy moment of the boy and the man, a world based on a moment of joy in a circus, with clowns and balloons. And so clowns are their own species, sacred in some ways and hated in others, with cream pies being potentially deadly weapons, and churches devoted to their promotion.

In this world, as the Stranger attempts to find the flower that can save the boy despite all the warnings about what it will cost, Tidhar tells a number of different stories. Most of these stories are western flavored, and will remind readers very much of The Dark Tower - the Stranger is a dead ringer for the gunslinger, especially as he gains a sidekick named The Kid. The stories here are based on historical murderers and events, folktales from various cultures, and more, and they are generally fascinating, and Tidhar does an excellent job making them feel natural one after the other, even as they're shifted into the fashion of the Escapement and feature similar characters.

Of course, and this was an issue with the other Tidhar work I've read (Central Station), how well it all combines to form a cohesive whole with a strong message is more of a question, and I was very often kind of feeling that I wasn't quite sure what point the book was making with its two worlds. The individual tales within are excellent and fascinating as mentioned above, and there's something really different about making the fantasy world be about that one moment in a child's life of true happiness....but where the book was going with that didn't quite work for me? Like it's not bad, and the individual parts work well, and the ending is fine, but I just felt like it should've been going somewhere more. It makes it kind of hard to add more to this review.

I suspect this will work for others more than me, and it's certainly worth your time despite the above thoughts, since the individual parts are all solid and the book is short. But alas.

When's the last time you've read a dark fantasy western featuring feral clowns? Yeah, well, when's the last time a dark fantasy western featuring feral clowns made your CRY? Lavie Tidhar's "The Escapement" is a wildly unique, original take on the hero's journey, and though some of its ideas may be a tad under-baked, the world-building alone is worth the price of admission. Also, unlike many novels with such bizarre concepts/worlds, there's beating heart beneath the weirdness, which had my in tears by the book's final passages. The times I spent in this world was far too brief, and I hope eventually we'll get to revisit the Stranger, the Kid, the Conjurer, and all the other strange but lovable characters who call the Escapement home, in this strange world where giants and shadow monsters battle in an eternal war, being in the presence of which being enough to permanently transform anything, where strongmen and carnies battle in the deep woods. Truly a treasure that I hope gets the attention it deserves.

Thank you to the author and Netgalley for providing a copy. I have reviewed honestly.

The Escapement is an intricate tale woven with creative threads and a captivating tale. The world building was spectacular, descriptive and unique. The characters we meet along the journey are quirky and spectacular in their singularities.

Overall, this novel was well written with themes that drew me in and ensared me from start to finish.

Lavie Tidhar’s The Escapement is a fantastic and fantastical fever dream of a novel, a weird western via Lewis Carroll, Gilgamesh if had been translated and illustrated by Norton Juster and scored by Ennio Morricone, The Searchers if it had starred Buster Keaton, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid had it been directed by David Lynch from a screenplay co-written by Steven King, Raymond Carver, and Italo Calvino and storyboarded by Salvador Dali. It’s a wondrous riot of imagination that veers back and forth from horrific to heartbreaking to laugh-out-loud funny to macabre to absurdist. Defying genre, defying categorization, even perhaps defying plot, Tidhar has crafted a baroque hallucinatory tale you have to let wash over you as much as you read it. Will it be to everyone’s taste? Absolutely not. But those who find it enough to their liking to continue will revel in its many rewards.

Somewhere in a harshly realistic world, a man (referenced only as “the man”) helplessly attends his despairingly ill son in the hospital where machines “beep and chirp” to no avail. Meanwhile, in The Escapement — a maniacal Wild West populated by clowns, immense stone giants, mimes, slave mines, the ghost of John Wayne Gacy, and others — a man known only as The Stranger quests for the Ur-shanabi, the Plant of Heartbeat, a mythical flower said to be able to cure anything, even time. The worlds can each at times be seen, mistily, blurrily, one from the other in ghostly fashion, and people travel back and forth at times, but as to which, if either, is the “real one” even the Stranger is unsure, wondering “do we dream that other world or does it dream us?” And he wonders it again as he and the Man fade in and out of each other’s moments:

He did not know if the Escapement were real, for what was real? The world was filled with impossible things, like the joyful laugh of a child. He closed his eyes. Behind them were only white walls, an antiseptic smell, the hum of machines. A doctor whispered something … When he opened his yes, the Kid was there.

The more realistic thread involving the man and his son, as noted above, reminded me of nothing so much as a Raymond Carver story in style and tone, the formation of the sentences, the language. That sense of despair, of always being on the edge. Tidhar captured me from the very opening:

The Boy was very still in the small white bed. The man held the book and he tried to keep reading from it, but his voice wouldn’t work … The man though of a day in spring, not that long ago, when he’d first taken the boy to see the circus. They’d walked hand in hand through the Midway … saw the clowns. He’d bought the boy a balloon and gave it to him to hold, but the boy let it go and the balloon floated far high into the sky, until it vanished. The boy had burst into tears and the man picked him up and held him close … and after but a moment the boy smiled and held the man’s face in hands and looked at him with such trust and love that would have broken the man’s heart had he let it. Dad, he said. Dad.

Sorrowful, bittersweet, filled with moment of aching pain but also aching beauty, the realistic section alone is worth the price of admission.

Intermingled with it, and taking up the lion’s share of the novel, the scenes involving the Stranger have a number of elements that act as parallels between stories beyond the two men blurring one into the other. The Stranger finds himself in a Waiting Room in a town that has the feel of the Lotus-Eater tale from The Odyssey. Later there is a great hole in the world. And everywhere there are clocks, broken, distorted, ticking but never tocking, time always marked, time feeling frozen, never enough time, time moving glacially, agonizingly slow.

The Stranger’s section is much more episodic, almost at times a series of short stories and digressive stories within stories. Clowns are scalped and enslaved, trains are robbed, a war beyond human comprehension wages seemingly forever with humans as pawns moved across the board and sometimes taken over, possessed, robbed of any agency and turned into “sock puppets.” The Stranger meets and travels for a time with a female bounty hunter, meets and travels for a longer time with a young man called The Kid, on his own quest, this to find and kill The Conjurer (one of those digressive stories we get later in the novel). Tidhar employs the classic Western moments in language, plot, and imagery, as in the scene, easily recognizable from any Western film:

They had all moved to the window, guns drawn, and the Stranger peered out onto Main Street. He saw the shops were rapidly closing … the people outside were running for shelter, and in mere moments the street was deserted. Behind them, he heard the owner of the bar loudly pump a shotgun.

While the Western is the foundational homage here, Tidhar stocks the novel (mostly the Stranger’s section) with a host of allusions: to Narnia, to Oz, to silent comedies, to famous clowns, the Tarot deck, folktales and fables, Gilgamesh as mentioned, Shelley, Greek mythology, some of which he notes as influences in an afterword. Half the fun is recognizing these breadcrumbs. But that’s not the only fun. There’ s a surprising amount of humor in a book filled with death and violence, maimings and war, massacres and horrific transformations. Though admittedly, some of the humor is itself attached to violence, as in a wonderful scene involving an attack by mimes: “They fired methodically at the mimes climbing the walls. The mimes mimed getting hurt. The mimes fell, hitting invisible obstacles … The Kid was out of bullets and … stabbed the creature in the neck … ‘Got something to say?” the Kid screamed.”

As you can see, this book is seriously warped, seriously weird, and so as I said in the intro, it won’t be for everyone. But everyone should at least start it. As for me, I can tell you already it’s going on my best of the year list, as have several earlier Tidhar novels. In fact, this one makes Tidhar Five for Five — it’s the fifth book by him I’ve given five stars to. I may have to start a new rating system for his next one . . .

THE ESCAPEMENT, by Lavie Tidhar, is quite possibly the weirdest book I have ever read. And no, I'm not saying it as if it's a bad thing. It just, well, is.

I was going to try to be be clever, using a dictionary definition of the word "escapement" to help describe the book. The website dictionary.com has 5 definitions of the word escapement, none of which (for me) accurately describe the book. The website thesaurus.com wasn't much better. It gave 8 synonyms for the word escapement, but I wasn't satisfied with any one of them.

It figures. The book defies description. But that's not a bad thing. It's really a good thing. How many books do readers comes across these days that are so different, so offbeat, so..weird, that they defy description? Not many. But we certainly have one here.

The Escapement (not the book, but the setting), is an alternate, parallel world populated with all sorts of weird creatures and occurrences. It is not unusual, to see on any given day, clowns (sometimes vicious), mimes (also sometimes vicious), bounty hunters, tarot cards, and giants made of stone. There are unexplained wars occurring, including wars between symbols. Heck, wars between different clown factions are referred to. The landscape is sometimes surrealistic, invoking images that remind the reader of Salvador Dali. We meet a version of John Wayne Gacy (as a clown, of course), who is nearly impossible to kill. It's...weird. But that's not a bad thing.

Our protagonist, if he can be called that, is known as "the Stranger". He has come to the Escapement to search for a particular flower, the "Ur-shanabi", the Plant of Heartbeat. He has come from our reality, the one we are familiar with, where his son is dying in a hospital. Our reality is known as that "other place", and there are ways of intentionally travelling between the two worlds, all of which involve the use of mind altering chemicals, whether it be alcohol or drugs. Sometimes the Stranger can see across to the other worlds. It's...weird. But that's not a bad thing.

Without giving anything away, THE ESCAPEMENT tells the story of the Stranger looking for the aforementioned plant in order to help save his son back in our world. But while that's the story element the novel hangs its hat on, it is almost such a minor point as to be almost irrelevant. THE ESCAPEMENT is really Tidhar's excuse for taking a whole bunch of literary references and dumping them into one story to see if he can make them fit together. And if he can't, so what? Yes, there's a narrative thread to follow throughout the book, but it's only here in order for Tidhar to masterfully weave all sorts of different things together
that make the reader's brain explode, or at the very least make readers shake their heads in bewilderment, but, ultimately, wonderment.

A few weeks ago as I write this Lavie Tidhar was a guest on The Coode Street Podcast. When talking about THE ESCAPEMENT, he said "that book is just weird". And I agree with him. But it's not a bad weird. It's a good weird. It's a book that doesn't telegraph where it's going. It's also a book that feels like it doesn't know where it's going until it gets there. But it's not predictable by any stretch of the imagination. And it does stretch the reader's imagination in a very good way. It's something different, and something weird. And in this case, it's a very good thing.

“The Stranger had been travelling for a long time, searching for the Flower of Heartbeat, and he was destined to travel for a long time more.”

The description can tell you only so much. The Stranger travels with his rifle through unpredictable land of Escapement, to find the Flower of Heartbeat. The man tries to cope with the dying of his little son.

I don´t think I´ve read so complex book since last year´s Driftwood by Marie Brennan (which was also amazing). From practically first paragraph you know this will be emotional journey. On the one hand, there is the man, devasted in hospital, trying to somehow save his son (no spoilers, first pages of the book), thinking about memories they have together – visiting of circus, the boy´s love for clowns, balloons,..). On the other hand, the Stranger is travelling through magical western of Escapement, trying to find the cure.

BUT! Don´t expect sweet sad story. The Escapement is everything but. The Escapement is brutal, not forgiving, battleyard between giants and something else, equally terrifying. Magical storms which can transform parts of your body to hourclocks full of ants; clowns, throwing at you custard pies which melt your face; time warping villages to never let you go….

I´ve never saw such blending of two timelines/stories together. It reminded me movie The Fall, but the Escapement was more fluid, more brutal (and I hope, someday, Tidhar´ll give us some notes from writing this story). Everything is going one direction – can the Stranger find the Flower and save the boy?

And as I´m accidentally listening Mad World right now, it somehow enhancing the sorrowful/insane feel of this book. The Escapement is literally mad, worlds are blending together, horrible massacres happening; but also watching the man in hospital, you are devasted along him. I love how this book is not personal (you don´t even know their names), but you feel everything with characters. Not only the main ones, but also sidekicks (as the right western), I love all of them.

It´s definitely one of the best books I´ve read for a long time. Also, did I mention it has a map? ♥

Thanks to Netgalley for an e-ARC. Now I want to have it on my shelves and hug it from time to time.

Well written, easy to read story about the intersection of a magical land, real life and many strange dimensions. Life-threatening clowns and mimes live here as well.
No plot, no character development just really strange world being. Very visual and feels like a Salvador Dali painting with Dark Tower overtones.

I like the concept - parallel worlds as an escape (literally, an Escapement) from grief, populated with whatever associations someone brings in - but the execution just felt messy and heavy-handed and overloaded with references (it’s the Tarot but it’s also some sort of spaghetti Western but it’s also war but it’s also some sort of bizarre clown as separate species type situation.) I guess this was supposed to be balanced by the constant flicker of the very grim real world scenario the man was in but instead it just led me to not be invested in either.

Lavie Tidhar es un autor que siempre está buscando sorprender. En la búsqueda de contar historias distintas a lo que la mayoría de las novedades nos ofrecen su propuesta varía desde historias de género negro, ciencia ficción con puro sentido de la maravilla o ficciones históricas, entre otros muchos temas. En este caso no podía ser menos. Su nueva novela es una especie de western protagonizado por un padre que vela por su hijo en una habitación de hospital mientras viaja en sus sueños a un mundo cuasi desértico y fantástico lleno de payasos, circos, dioses, seres mitológicos y forajidos que le harán la vida imposible. Vayamos por partes.

Como decía, The Escapement arranca con un padre en un hospital. A su lado, su hijo enfermo en el filo entre la vida y la muerte. El adulto, mientras avanza con la lectura de su libro, va pegando unas cabezadas que lo llevan de manera ficticia, quizá real, a un mundo desértico llamado The Escapement que se asemeja a lo que vendría a ser el lejano oeste de las películas de vaqueros, pero con influencias de Carnivale, la serie de HBO de hace unos años.

En su sueño, The Stranger, que es como se le conoce en este lugar, comienza la búsqueda de una flor muy especifica que puede ayudar en el objetivo de salvar a su hijo de un fatal destino. La flor, llamada Ur-Shanabi, es la flor del corazón y solo puede ser encontrada en las Montañas de la Oscuridad, lejos de su punto de partida. Durante los episodios de esta historia iremos viendo como The Stranger se maneja en este mundo donde la supervivencia no es una cosa sencilla. De primeras veremos que se trata de un lugar lleno de payasos y acróbatas cuyas intenciones no son precisamente buenas.

Enseguida se encontrará con un aliado, un niño que lo ayudará a manejarse por las distintas fases de la historia. Como si de un videojuego se tratase, The Stranger se ira enfrentando en cada uno de los episodios a nuevos enemigos, algunos cuasi inmortales como veremos. Y es aquí donde la imaginería de Tidhar se despliega en su esplendor con todo un elenco de personajes de todo estilo y origen provenientes de las mitologías griega, hebrea, rusa y otras muchas. El elenco es increíble y cada ocurrencia a lo largo del camino resulta cada vez mas loca que la anterior.

En el arranque también tenía la sensación de que el autor había querido homenajear las clásicas tramas de las películas de vaqueros y cada capítulo alguno de los tópicos del género. Encontramos una ambientación muy similar: cazadores de recompensas, ladrones de bancos, bares de alterne poco recomendables, etc. También hay robos o duelos a tiros entre los personajes. Sin embargo, en apenas tres o cuatro episodios el abanico se despliega y el componente weird se abre para sorpresa continua de quien lo esta leyendo. Esto incluye Dioses en Guerra, personajes con instrumentos como extremidades, fusiones humanas con animales y otras muchas cosas que dan lugar a situaciones inverosímiles y, algún caso, muy divertidas.

En contraposición a este despliegue de imaginación e investigación por parte de Tidhar, no podemos olvidar el eje de la novela: el padre desesperado por la sueprvivencia de su hijo. Es interesante los retazos que se van salpicando cuando el personaje cambia entre ambos mundos preguntándose cuál es el verdadero en realidad. Le achaco a esta parte la escasez de componente emocional en la historia. Los viajes al mundo real apenas aportan un hilo conductor, pero una vez llegado al final de la novela apenas encuentro una motivación que justifique la alocada trama en el mundo alternativo, si es que era ese el objetivo.

The Escapement es por tanto una novela muy original. El despliegue de situaciones y personajes de toda índole, unido a una ambientación western y circense es una combinación que merece la pena visitar y dejarse llevar esperando lo imposible. El enlace con la historia del mundo real es anecdótico y ambiguo y el final bastante abierto, pero eso apenas supone un pequeño porcentaje de una historia alocada y llena de detalles fuera de lo común donde el asombro no deja de crecer según se avanzan las páginas.

The Escapement est un roman de Lavie Tidhar, dans lequel l’auteur mêle Weird Fiction, western, Fantasy, et univers juxtaposés. Il met en scène la quête d’un père au chevet de son fils atteint d’une maladie cardiaque, qui évolue sous les traits du Stranger dans le monde surnaturel de l’Escapement, dans lequel il recherche Ur-Shanabi, une fleur qui pourrait guérir son enfant.
Ce monde, peu à peu colonisé par les humains, comporte des créatures surnaturelles telles que des clowns, les Arcanes Majeures du Tarot, mais aussi les Colosses et les pupae umbrarum, qui se livrent un conflit séculaire qui détruit ou transforme profondément les humains qui se retrouvent pris entre leurs feux.
Le récit s’ancre pleinement dans la Weird Fiction de par le monde et les métamorphoses qu’il décrit et le mélange des genres qu’il opère, ce que j’ai beaucoup apprécié ! J’ai trouvé la quête du Stranger et la fin du roman particulièrement touchants.
Si vous avez aimé Aucune terre n’est promise et que vous lisez en anglais, je vous recommande vivement la lecture de The Escapement !