Made Things

Made Things is aimed at a younger audience and intended to teach the evils of hording power.

It's a fun story about a street urchin that teams up with magical figurines. But it really hits you on the head with the rich and powerful are evil message.

This is the first fantasy book I've read by Tchaikovsky, and maybe it's because I started with his "Children of Time" series that I found this one a little underwhelming, but it felt just downright TOO SHORT. It's the story of Coppelia, an apprentice puppet maker in a magical city who gets drawn into a daring heist; and also the story of tiny automata created through a combination of artifice and magic. These little puppet-sized people are trying to establish themselves in the city and make contact with Coppelia, who is fascinated and forms a partnership with them.

There are a lot of great elements in this book - the tiny automata, the magical city, the class stratification - but somehow they just didn't seem to deliver satisfactorily. Maybe I'm judging overly harshly because I know Tchaikovsky can and has done so much better, but the ending seemed to wrap up very abruptly and not entirely believably, and there are a lot of loose ends left unanswered that I would have loved to see included (like Coppelia's parents, and what happened to Auntie's collection). I will likely pick up the sequel to see if more is revealed there.