Clockwork Dynasty

By Daniel H. Wilson
Random House Audio (2016)
10 hours and 45 minutes

Reviewed by Ryan Winn

In Daniel H. Wilson’s new book, Clockwork Dynasty, an anthropologist named June Stefanov has dedicated her professional life to chasing family lore. When she was a young girl, her grandfather told her of a humanoid machine who slaughtered his enemies in a war zone. The patriarch’s proof is the relic that now hangs around June’s neck, hidden from both her peers and the patrons who financed her world-traveling study of ancient clockwork figures. She’s never told a soul about her inherited secret, and when she does so her patrons withdraw their support and the robots she couldn’t quite prove exist begin to hunt her.

June’s story is juxtaposed with the century-spanning narrative of Peter and Elena. They are two robots who were revived by Russia’s Peter the Great before his death in 1725, and who have endured through to the millennium despite having to hide their existence from humans and their brethren alike. Siblings by circumstance, they’re motivated by pravda (truth and justice) and logic, respectively. Their different impetuses means they view the world through dissimilar lenses, and their near immortality makes for familial squabbles that last for centuries.

The two story arcs merge as Peter comes to June’s aid in a plot that one of the book’s blurbs rightly compares to the Terminator franchise. June’s family heirloom is the artifact that Peter needs to stop their enemies from destroying humanity, but in order to employ its hidden power he must first remember a time before his Russian reawakening. The frequent battles that line their journey are cinematic in scope, building upon one another until the crescendo peaks with the novel’s climax.

Author Daniel H. Wilson, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, employs his Ph.D. in robotics to convince the audience how his speculative story has roots in plausibility. Like his prior works, including the New York Times bestselling Robopocalypse and its sequel Robogenesis, this novel is packed with thrilling and suspenseful fun.

Readers David Giuntoli and Claire Coffee are deft at juggling the narratives, with Guintoli providing Peter’s time-hardened perspective, while Coffee voices June with the vernacular tenacity of the modern heroine she comes to embody. Together, the stories weave exposition and cliffhangers, and the contrasting voices help amplify Wilson’s talent for creating characters with distinctive speaking styles and cadences.

Daniel H. Wilson is one of the most talented speculative fiction writers working today. His admirable output is a pleasure to consume, and his relative youth—he was 40 at the time of this publication— makes him a writer who is likely just hitting his literary stride. Mark his as a voice to listen to for years to come.

Ryan Winn teaches theater and communication courses at College of Menominee Nation.