This book creates such a strange world that you need to concentrate quite hard and hang on until Chapter 2, when it will get a firm grip on you. It's an unsettling and exciting read, full of disturbing images that may invade your dreams if you read late at night. This is the second in a series, but stands very well on its own. Perhaps I would have had less of a shock if I had started with the first book.
There were smaller rocks too, and Bellis saw that these were shards of the larger machines, bolts and pipework junctions; or finer, more intricate and complete pieces, gauges and glasswork and compact steampower engines. The pebbles were gears, cogs, flywheels, bolts and screws.
Bellis looked down at her cupped hands. They were full of thousands of minuscule ratchets and gearwheels and ossified springs, like the innards of inconceivably tiny clocks. Each particle of wreckage a grain like sand, smaller than a crumb.
