Made Things (Adrian Tchaikovsky)

Made Things
Adrian Tchaikovsky
Tordotcom
Fiction, YA? Fantasy
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION: All mages (and half-mages, and even ordinary folk with big dreams) come to Loretz hoping to rise high in the magic city's society, but few ever get further than the slums of the Barrio, ending up in orphanages and workhouses, from which they tend to disappear without a trace. That was the fate of Coppelia's half-mage parents, and would have been her own fate had she not escaped into the streets to ply her trade and minor talents as a con artist and puppetmaker and thief. When she encountered the homunculi, secretive tiny beings made of inanimate material imbued with magical life, they formed a fast, if not entirely trusting, bond: the homunculi help her steal magical trinkets and stay alive, and in exchange she guards the secret of their existence, gives them half the take, and carves them new bodies to animate and enlarge their fledgling colony, but they all have their own agendas, and the Barrio is not a place that lends itself to honesty and openness. When Coppelia and her shady sponsor Auntie Countless get wind of a miraculous discovery in the catacombs beneath the palace - a human-sized artificial figure, like the legendary golems of old, only worked in precious metals and gemstones - both Coppelia and her homunculus companions are intrigued... but the discovery may lead them all to their dooms, unearthing a secret deeper and older than the mages and the city of Loretz itself.

REVIEW: This was an odd little novella with a great setting and concept, reasonably solid characters, and a story that, while not relentless, never drops off. Loretz, like many cities, is a cold and cruel place to many who come to its streets and squares, and survival breeds a certain hardness even in the young. Coppelia is no pure and innocent victim of circumstance; even if she was initially pushed to thievery, she embraces it and learns to thrive in the dark corners and narrow alleys. With the homunculi, she feels a certain kinship as a puppetmaker with some minor magic of her own, a fascination in how they move and operate and the origins of their secretive society, but also knows that they're not being entirely open with her. They have their own goals, their own wants and needs, and through the wooden woman Tef and metal man Arc, they become every bit as big on the page as the full-sized human characters, magic-dependent beings struggling to survive in a city where magic is hoarded by the greedy and the gluttonous and just plain arrogant mages of the palace. At the heart of the tale is a heist with a collection of colorful characters, theft and trickery being the only way to survive when one's lives are run by the ultimate thieves and tricksters. The whole makes for a very good story, with characters and a setting that could easily support more tales.

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