What I'm Reading Now: Jay Lake's "Mainspring"

By Beau

What if the world as we know it wasn't subject to the unseen, untouchable laws of mass, gravity, and velocity but instead followed its normal helio-centric orbit by way of a colossal brass gear wheel encircling the equator of the earth along a Divinely-made brass track, with all the other planets of the solar system?  And what if the clock-work mechanics that kept the world spinning on its brass track around the sun were winding down and the earth was starting to slow and falter?
That is the premise of Jay Lake's clockpunk work, "Mainspring", set in a alternate, fantastical world of the early 1900's where the zeppelins and sea ships of the British and Chinese Empires battle for supremacy in Northern Earth while the colossal Equatorial Wall separates it from the exotic, mythological lands of Southern Earth.  Throw on top of all that a Christianity-like religion that had the Roman's crucifying the Brass Christ not on a cross but on a giant gear and wheel referred to as the horofix and we've got ourselves a novel, innovative story unlike anything, anywhere people have read before.