Clockwork Boys

expanded novel 2017 The Saint of Steel

Record

First published	2017
Original language	EN
Work type	novel
Canon status	expanded
First-edition ISBN	9781614504061

Synopsis

When the forger Slate is convicted of treason, she faces a death sentence. Instead, along with Caliban, a disgraced paladin once possessed by a demon, Brenner, an assassin and her murderous former lover, and Learned Edmund, a young scholar whose religion teaches that women are poison to men's souls, she is sent on a mission to learn the secret of the Clockwork Boys, nearly unstoppable mechanical soldiers from a neighbouring kingdom who have been laying waste to the land. The three criminals are bound to the task by carnivorous tattoos. If they succeed, pardons and rewards await, but they must survive a long journey through enemy territory to reach Anuket City, from which the Clockwork Boys emerge, and Slate has her own reasons to dread returning to her former home. No one sent before them has come back. The first half of the Clocktaur War duology, set in the world of the Saint of Steel.

Where it sits

• Universe: The Saint of Steel
• Series: The Clocktaur War expanded; position 1 of 2 in the series' recorded order
• Author: T. Kingfisher

Notes

• From the series record (The Clocktaur War): A completed duology set in the same shared setting as the Core Canon Saint of Steel novels -- 'The World of the White Rat', per Wikipedia's own Clocktaur Wars article and the rating platform's umbrella series listing -- following four different protagonists (Slate, Learned Edmund, Brennan, and Caliban, a disgraced paladin) on a quest against automaton 'clocktaurs'. Registered Expanded Canon rather than a separate new universe, since it shares its setting/temple network with the Saint of Steel's own Core Canon rather than being an unrelated continuity. No independent award history found.

Neighbouring works

Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings and are never conflated: a book's place in one says nothing about its place in the other.

• Publication order, within the series The Clocktaur War: position 1 of 2: next The Wonder Engine (2018)

Sources

• Wikipedia: Clocktaur Wars
• Rating-platform listing: The World of the White Rat series by T. Kingfisher
• Stop and Smell the Books (Substack): The Clocktaur War duology by T Kingfisher (2017-2018)
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._Kingfisher
• The Broken Binding (publisher descriptions of the Clocktaur War duology)
• Fantasy Literature (review)

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