Tin by Pádraig Kenny

Tin by Pádraig Kenny
Chicken House, 2019

The cover and title rather misleadingly suggest a quest akin to the Wizard of Oz, and I found it puzzling that the author has his breath taken away by it given that it seems unconnected to the story. Having said that, it is a very attractive cover and may well pull in some readers looking for warmly human speculative fiction.

Set between the wars in an alternate steampunk England, this novel brings charm and exciting adventure to a story about home and family. 

Living with a incompetent and unlicensed engineer and an oddball group of “mechanical” children, 12 year-old Christopher had always thought he was a “proper” boy, but an accident reveals that he too is constructed of metal and he is a rare and illegal machine with a transferred soul. 

When Christopher is kidnapped by a government agency, the misfit mechanicals, Jack, Round Rob, Gripper, Manda, and their human friend, aspiring engineer Estelle, set off in pursuit. Along the way, they go to Ironhaven, the town where discarded and broken mechanicals go, to seek the help of the country’s most gifted engineer. Switching narrative point of view between Christopher and Jack, the reader can follow both strands of the story leading to a revealing climax in an old prison. 

This world of magically created, and all-white, mechanicals lacks some logic. Christopher is haunted by vivid sensory memories of his home and mother, but these turn out to be false memory “patches.” Jack and the others, particularly Rob, though lacking souls have definite personalities, can make decisions, feel despair and joy, love and friendship, and I found myself wondering how they differ from real children or even “ensouled” ones like Christopher. 

The switches of narration, especially at the end, get confusing and there are a lot of pseudo-scientific terms thrown around which are incomprehensible and irrelevant. I also found the end battle to be rather overdone given the more sophisticated storytelling that led up to it.

But that said, I liked this more than my review above might suggest. The characterization, problematic or not, is well done and the team of mechanicals and their human companions are delightful and sympathetic. The author has a fine imagination and the world he has built here could certainly sustain some more stories. And while I started by grumbling about the misleading Wizard of Oz cover, the mechanicals do find out that there’s no place like home.