The Liberation



Today I finished reading The Liberation, which I started about 9pm on Friday night when I realised the third part of Ian Tregillis’ Alchemy Wars trilogy had been released. I don’t think I wrote about The Mechanical, whereas I wrote about The Rising, the second part, and didn’t enjoy it that much. So I was sad that the third part was even less enjoyable than the first two. Spoilers ahead if you haven’t read the first two books…

The second book concluded with the New French settlements in North America destroyed, and the Dutch clockwork automata (the “Mechanicals”) freed of the controlling metageasa that had been applied for centuries by their creators. The Liberation doesn’t pick up there immediately, but instead back in Holland, where the rebellious Mechanicals arrive and start slaughtering the Dutch. This isn’t the most enjoyable start to a book, unless you like people getting turned into sprays of blood and continuous, unremitting misery, and unfortunately the tone doesn’t really improve from there on. It’s strange, because no matter how grim the Milkweed Triptych was, with child-killing warlocks and electric Nazi X-Men, I never really felt spiritually crushed in the way that the Alchemy Wars seems to affect me. It’s not a light read, and although I felt compelled to see how things turned out, there’s not many points (any points?) where the mood lightens.

Further, although there are some very smart people in the book, quite a bit of it relies on them being stupid, or forgetful; not setting up defensive perimeters against rogue Mechanicals, not considering what will happen if they provide Mechanicals with ways to rewrite their programming, not securing themselves against brainwashed former allies (like Visser). It’s not quite on the level of idiot-plotting, but it’s skirting the borders.

But worst of all, it just feels like a book to be endured, rather than enjoyed. The structure is a bit too onerous and the pain of the situations that Berenice and Anastasia are both thrown into are just crushing, unremittingly bleak. There’s a great book in here about slavery and how that relates to AI and vivisection and so much else, but it doesn’t feel that’s what got onto the page. Better luck next trilogy, I guess.


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