THE DREAM OF PERPETUAL MOTION has a lot going on for it. The fantastical, steampunk world created by Dexter Palmer is quite striking, the writing is extremely funny, at times curiously quirky, sentimental early on, with a huge magical child eye on its first half, and peppered through out, there's are starlingly dark scenes, that though violent, are balance by a sense of humor to keep them from turning you off from its gore.
Though the story remains compelling, it loses steam after the halfway point, mostly because its main character, Harold Winslow, becomes dour with adulthood (he's recounting his life, and from childhood up to his early twenties his life is most absorbing) and he becomes borderline abstract, almost secondary to all the things happening around him, and not as likable, only because as life dulls him, he becomes a cypher with almost no personality, and I feel like we in turn, lose the sould of the story in the process. Also, the books starts dragging some, to the point that it becomes hard to continued reading, with things happening, it seems, just to make the story longer but not advancing it in any shape or form.
When the story reaches its climax, it feels as though Harold doesn't even want to be there, he's just doing it so that it all ends as it should; if he was an actor in a movie, this would be the equivalent of him phone it in. Which makes me sad, because I really enjoy most of the book, and as a steampunk enthusiast, I love the world Dexter created for it, and how cool it all was at the beginning and how intriguing everything was from the point of view of Harold the kid, Harold the teenager, Harold the young adult, until Harold the 30 year old, left us a bit cold.
I'm sure others will find the book riveting from beginning to end, I just wished Dexter Palmer would have not let Harold become more or less a device to tight everything together without giving him a choice. B-
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