Review by Booklist Review
James follows The Tusk That Did the Damage (2015) with a rich, sprawling, picaresque historical novel about the apprenticeship of Abbas, an Indian woodworker, to Lucien Du Leze, a dissipated French clockmaker tasked with creating an automaton for India's lateeighteenth-century ruler, Tipu Sultan. The automaton, a Rube Goldberg--like sculpted wooden contraption of cogs, wheels, bellows, and chutes, is encased in an elaborately carved likeness of a tiger eating a man. This gruesome but gorgeous wonder of artistry and engineering brings them a modicum of fame and comfort, but British forces soon topple Tipu's regime and Tipu's tiger vanishes. Du Leze escapes back to France, but Abbas is less fortunate and spends years as an indentured seaman on British warships. Only his dream of being reunited with his mentor, honing his craft, and seeing the enchanting Jehanne, Du Leze's ward, keeps Abbas alive. When Abbas and Jehanne finally reconnect, their shared mission of rescuing and restoring Tipu's tiger launches them on a farcical escapade that sparkles with sharp wit and subtle longing. From the tyrannical opulence of Tipu's palace to the fading glory of a British country manor, James weaves a lustrous tale of intrigue and survival, cunning and romance.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
James (The Tusk That Did the Damage) returns with a spectacular tale of creativity and colonialism drawing on the "Tippoo's Tiger" automaton displayed in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. In 1794 Mysore, India, teenager Abbas carves intricate mechanical toys at his father's furniture shop. After Mysore's ruler, Tipu Sultan, learns of Abbas's talents, he orders Abbas to help French inventor and clockmaker Lucien du Leze craft Mysore's first automaton. Their "fantastical curiosity," as Tipu calls the life-size wooden tiger capable of sound and movement, pleases the court. While under du Leze's tutelage, Abbas meets Jehanne Martine, the biracial daughter of Tipu's French armorer. Du Leze, Jehanne, and her father sail to France in 1799, and Abbas stays behind to tend his ailing father. His hopes to follow them are dashed by Britain's bloody conquest of Mysore, and by the time he arrives in Rouen in 1805 to take up the apprenticeship he's been promised, du Leze is dead. He reunites with Jehanne, who tells him the British have shipped the mechanical tiger to England with other looted artifacts. Abbas proposes an audacious plan to reclaim the object, believing its public display could make them rich and give them the chance to make their mark on history. There's an unceasing exuberance to the prose, and James's descriptions are endlessly witty (du Leze's outfit for the tiger's unveiling, an Afghani tunic and a shawl from Kashmir, is "an atlas of textiles"). Rarely is a novel so dense with painful themes also such fun. At once swashbuckling and searing, this is a marvelous achievement. (June)
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Review by Library Journal Review
James (The Tusk That Did the Damage) offers a sweeping historical tale, tracing the creation, search for, and reclamation of a gruesome yet ingenious automaton. In late-18th-century Mysore, India, 17-year-old Abbas is taken from his home to the sumptuous palace of Tipu Sultan, known as the Tiger of Mysore. There, he is apprenticed to the French clockmaker Lucien du Leze and tasked with creating an automaton of a tiger attacking a British soldier. Then Tipu's palace is looted by the British, and the tiger automaton is stolen. James's novel draws on a real automaton called Tippoo's Tiger, made in Mysore in the 1780s or 1790s and now displayed at London's V&A Museum. Narrator Maanuv Thiara's evocative voicework transports listeners to James's lushly described landscapes as Abbas travels through India, France, and England in search of the automaton, which has joined a collection of looted artworks in the English countryside. Throughout this lively, fast-moving story, James deftly explores war, love, colonialism, and racial and cultural identity with humor, wit, and finesse. VERDICT A piercing and thought-provoking must-listen. This is storytelling at its finest.--Whitney Bates-Gomez
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
An expert Indian woodworker gets a front-row seat to 18th- and 19th-century imperialism. Abbas, the hero of James' lively and symbolically rich third novel, is a poor 17-year-old artisan in Mysore in 1794 when he's recruited by Tipu Sultan, the local ruler, to apprentice with Lucien Du Leze, a French clockmaker. Together they are charged with making an automaton of a tiger attacking a British soldier. The experience hones his carving skills, but just as importantly it introduces him to an intercontinental power play: Tipu, aka the Tiger of Mysore, is attempting to fend off an incursion by the British East India Company by appealing for French support by any means necessary, including the automaton. But with France roiled in the aftermath of its own revolution, Mysore falls in 1799, prompting Abbas to escape to France, where he connects with Lucien's daughter, Jehanne. Together, they plot to recover the automaton, which is in the hands of Lady Selwyn, widow of a British soldier who served in India. From Abbas' first meeting with Lucien to his and Jehanne's negotiations with Selwyn, James trains her descriptions on the ways Indians are displaced and diminished by imperialists and the ways they have to contort themselves to adjust to society. (Selwyn's high-mannered butler, an Indian man named Rum, exemplifies the psychic costs of force-feeding oneself another culture's protocols.) But though the intensity of James' critique is clear, her prose is fleet and rich in ironic humor. "I am here because you were there," Rum thinks, encapsulating the perverse logic and cruelty of his circumstance. The automaton of the novel actually exists, James explains in a note; her novel, as the title hints, is an engaging reminder that today's museum pieces are often functions of forgotten exploitation and theft. A smart, sharp tale, as well crafted as the object at its center. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
