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Title | Waking
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Author | Emily Thompson
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Cover Art | ---
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Publisher | CreateSpace - 2013
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First Printing | CreateSpace - 2013
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Title | Trick
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Author | Emily Thompson
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Cover Art | ---
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Publisher | CreateSpace - 2013
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First Printing | CreateSpace - 2013
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Title | Dreamer
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Author | Emily Thompson
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Cover Art | ---
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Publisher | 2014
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First Printing | 2014
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Title | Missing
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Author | Emily Thompson
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Cover Art | Emily Thompson
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Publisher | CWTwist - 2015
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First Printing | CWTwist - 2015
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Title | Inquest
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Author | Emily Thompson
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Cover Art | Emily Thompson
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Publisher | CWTwist - 2016
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First Printing | CWTwist - 2016
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Title | Blood
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Author | Emily Thompson
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Cover Art | Emily Thompson
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Publisher | CWTwist - 2017
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First Printing | CWTwist - 2017
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Title | Family
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Author | Emily Thompson
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Cover Art | Emily Thompson
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Publisher | CWTwist - 2018
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First Printing | CWTwist - 2018
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Title | Depth
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Author | Emily Thompson
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Cover Art | ---
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Publisher | ---
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First Printing | ---
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Title | Home
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Author | Emily Thompson
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Cover Art | ---
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Publisher | ---
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First Printing | ---
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Title | Time
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Author | Emily Thompson
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Cover Art | ---
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Publisher | ---
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First Printing | ---
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Title | Faith
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Author | Emily Thompson
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Cover Art | ---
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Publisher | ---
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First Printing | ---
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Title | Closure
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Author | Emily Thompson
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Cover Art | ---
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Publisher | ---
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First Printing | ---
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Category | Steampunk
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Warnings | None
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Main Characters | Twist, Jonas, Myra, Arabel, Storm, Skye
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Main Elements | Steampunk
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Website | clockworktwist.com
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Waking
Twist has never left London, until today. Now he's traveling on an airship--with a crew that insists they're not pirates--on his way to find the clockwork princess because he's the only one who can fix her.
In true Neo-Victorian style, Clockwork Twist is set in a lush and vibrant world where things are as you might expect in 1878. That is, of course, if fantastic creatures like djinn, faeries, kitsunes and vampires were commonplace. An increasing number of people are being born with supernatural senses, called Sights. While airship tourism is sweeping the globe, air-piracy is also on the rise.
Twist is among the Sighted, but his Sight is unusual. While others might be able to see and hear over great distances, find anything they can imagine anywhere in the world, or even recognize every type of flower by scent alone, Twist's Sight shows him only damage. Whenever he touches a broken clock or machine, he can instantly understand the damage and can fix it easily. If he touches a person, even for a moment, his mind fills with a terrible vision of whatever trauma or pain once broke them. Naturally, he's chosen a solitary existence and shuns all human contact.
Unfortunately, thanks to his seclusion, Twist is also unfamiliar with everything beyond his own clock shop, hidden away on a quiet and ever-drizzly London street. When a treasure hunter arrives at his door with proof that they have found the fabled clockwork princess--Twist's favorite old fairy tale--it's up to Twist alone to bring her back to life.
The continuing series of Clockwork Twist begins with book one: Waking. Join Twist as he embarks on his first adventure, and find out first hand if he can actually survive it.
Trick
Twist wasn't the only one who wanted to find the clockwork princess. Having finally rescued Myra from obscurity and ruin, Twist and Jonas must now flee Bombay and return to Europe in a desperate attempt to secure her freedom.
Continuing the story of Clockwork Twist, "Book Two: Trick", follows the unassuming clockmaker and his companions as they are pursued across the globe by a mysterious and shadowy society of technology thieves. The Rooks would stop at nothing to posses Myra and all of her clockwork secrets.
Join Twist once again as he encounters wonders and absurdity beyond anything he could imagine, in this exciting steampunk adventure. Travel with him across the Arabian Sea, through Egypt, and back into Europe by airship, steam train, and sailing ship. Meet a whole new cast of characters, and re-encounter old friends and enemies, as Twist struggles to retain some semblance of sanity in his bizarre new lifestyle.
The intrepid three are joined along the way by magical beings of both human and mythical natures, underground kidnappers, notable inventors, and a safari enthusiast. But friends can only do so much to aid them. In the end it’s up to Twist and Jonas to protect their princess and all of their hopes of having a future together.
Dreamer
After an airship crash, Twist and his friends are rescued by a cloud-borne tribe of Native-Americans only to find themselves quickly caught up in an evil Cypher plot. While fighting for freedom, unsettling questions arise about Twist and Jonas.
In this exciting third installment of the Clockwork Twist series, Twist and his companions continue to travel the globe, from San Francisco to Cuba, and to the bottom of the Caribbean Sea. Along the way they reunite with old friends and enemies, while also making intriguing new allies. One of these is a strange young boy who shares other people’s dreams whenever he falls asleep.
While Myra and Natasha Samara entertain adoring crowds on their world-wide theater tour, Twist and Jonas discover ominous new mysteries surrounding the odd connection between their Sights. Twist also comes to realize that his and Jonas’s Sights are uniquely powerful and dangerous when compared to those of all other Sighted people.
When Twist and his companions find themselves unexpectedly faced with a fierce and inescapable Cypher lord, it’s up to Twist alone to save them all. Will Twist be able to best such a formidable foe? Will he and his friends be doomed to flee from the evil Cyphers for the rest of time? Find out, in this action-packed adventure!
Missing
Jonas has vanished into thin air and only Twist can even remember him at all. To make matters worse, Twist fears that Jonas has been taken by sinister monsters that plan to steal him away to Jupiter. Now it's up to Twist alone to save his friend.
Twist and Jonas have grown close over the last few weeks, and learned to depend on each other. But when Jonas disappears suddenly, everyone but Twist forgets that he ever existed. Even Arabel believes herself an only child. Trying to prove to Jonas's family that the man does exist, and is in dire need of rescue, only succeeds in making Twist question his own sanity.
After losing his friend, Twist has a dream that it was a dragon that stole Jonas away, and that the beast now plans to take Jonas all the way to Jupiter in a spacecraft. Terrified that he is losing his mind, Twist has no choice but to find out the truth. Is Jonas really in danger of being stolen away to Jupiter by dragons, or has he never been anything more than a figment of Twist's imagination?
Follow Twist as he travels from London, over the North Pole, and through Japan to Australia, enlisting the help of old friends and new, and even one old enemy. Find out if dragons are real, or if Twist is finally cracking up, as he searches the world for any salvation from this maddening turn of events!
Inquest
Twist didn't believe in dragons until he was almost eaten by one. Slaying the fire-breathing beast seemed like a good idea at the time, but now the dragon's brothers want revenge and they've charged Twist with murder.
When Twist is arrested, he and his friends are taken into a world of magical creatures, normally never seen by human beings. They cross the world by submersible with a dragon captor and a djinn, ride on a flying island, visit a hidden magical city at the South Pole, and plunge into an active volcano, all while Twist struggles to prove his innocence and survive his sentence. The irreverent kitsune, Vane, also accompanies Twist, stumbling across his own mysterious people along the way. Meanwhile, the Rooks and Cyphers battle for the last remnants of dragon technology on Earth.
After generations of avoiding humanity, the dragons built a ship to take themselves away from Earth and into the stars. But navigating isn’t easy. Jonas's Sight allows him to see over vast distances, and sometimes even through time itself, glimpsing the future. The dragons thought they could use him to guide their ship through the cosmos, but Twist and his friends put a stop to that plan, slaying a few unlucky dragons along the way. Now the dragons want justice for their fallen brothers.
He saved his clockwork princess from evil secret societies, he rescued his sky pirate from outer space, but now Twist has to get himself out of peril. Delve into magic and intrigue once again with Clockwork Twist!
Blood
Jonas always says that he hates his family. But when they are attacked by vampires, his lies fall away. He'll drop everything and race across the world to save them, taking Twist and Myra right along into certain danger.
Twist has gotten accustomed to life out in the world. He's grown confident with experience and no longer feels quite so nervous when a long journey into peril lays before him. After their various adventures, Twist, Jonas, and Myra have each grown stronger in each other. They've fought evil men, and dragons too. They have crossed the world, and now even Twist has stopped feeling lost.
When people they care about a fall into danger, Twist and his friends find a brand new reason to worry. Philippe Rodés is in trouble, his wife Aazzi is beside herself with fear, and the safety of the rest of Jonas's family is in question. The only trouble is that Twist and his friends are halfway around the world from the Vimana's imperiled crew. And so, with a helping hand from the Rooks, and the brave agent Skye Blue at their side, they don't hesitate to answer Aazzi's cry for help.
Along the way, Twist and his companions learn more about about each other and their pasts. Jonas begins to give up his pretenses, revealing his true feelings about his family and his friends, and Myra becomes more self-assured. But then, when Jonas has a terrible vision of the future, Twist is forced to discover his own true nature, and he learns what truly matters the most to him.
Family
After a lifetime alone, Twist finally finds himself as a part of a family, among his close friends and his new bride. But will their support be enough to save him from an angry dragon that wants to drive him mad?
His friends now safe from vampires, and his bride at his side, Twist thought he might have some time to rest after his most recent adventure. But what was once only a mild annoyance has now grown into a true threat.
Twist never meant to kill the dragon. He had only tried to defend himself, but the dragon had been slain all the same. Now, the dragon's ghost still clings to Twist's skin, giving him uncomfortable sensations, hallucinations, and nightmares. Some warn that the dragon's ghost will plague him until it drives him mad and eventually takes possession of Twist completely. Although they say that this should take years to happen, thanks to Twist's powerful sight, the dragon's ghost is getting stronger much faster than that.
The best hope that Twist has to free him from the ghost is gypsy magic. Jonas spent his childhood among a troupe of gypsies, and says that the woman who took him in as her own grandson was a powerful witch who might be able to help Twist. Without anywhere else to turn, Twist and his friends now have to set off across the world, once again, this time to meet a witch.
I immediately fell in love with Twist. He's such a sweet, quirky character who was dragged out of his comfortable home in London into an worldwide adventure on airship, in a submarine, through jungles and caves. And quite the cast of characters, you have vampires, djinns, kitsunes and of course it wouldn't be steampunk without a clockwork damsel in distress!
In fact I would be hardpressed to find something I didn't like about this story. It was a pleasure to read, and while I couldn't envision the faces of the various characters (something I can rarely do at the best of times) the author was able to create a very vivid world in my head. A little bit of steam, a little bit of magic, Victorian dress and swashbuckling pirates (with jetpacks no less). And the villains weren't two-dimensional evil privateers whose only purpose was to provide conflict for the main character, they had their own back stories, quirks and they kind of grew on you as much as the protagonists did. I'm hoping we'll be seeing them again in subsequent books.
It was magical and wonderful, it was fun and uplifting. It was hard to believe that such a short book could have so many elements that I enjoyed crammed together but somehow still working like well tuned clockwork.
I absolutely adored the second book in the series too. Twist is so cute and sweet and clueless, and Jonas so gruff on the outside but so caring on the inside. In this one they they have to fight to keep Myra safe from a group of people that collect odities, on the surface to "keep the world" safe but in what way Myra could hurt anyone is questionable. I found a few bits of the premise to be a bit hard to accept, but you could throw Twist and Jonas into any plot and I would love it as long as they were together. Hope they figure out they were meant for each other! There's nothing explicit, they are just friends, but they could be so much more if they realized it. And a great pleasure to read, just like the first. It made me look forward to going to work so I could open up my eReader during the commute to spend some time in this wonderful world.
Now though the first two books were free, I'll have to pay to get my hands on the third...but I'm completely willing to pay for the priviledge of spending more time with Twist, Jonas and Myra. Now to decide if it should be in electronic or physical form...
May 2020
It's been a while, too long a while, since I read a Twist book, but I've been collecting them in physical form as they come out. This year I decided it would be a good time to start up the series again but I'll only read one a year, to make sure I'll have plenty of Twist to look forward to! Now at some point I had already read Dreamer but I guess didn't update this review, and now I've also read Missing. The plot was a little absurd in this one, but then this is a world where the absurb is fairly commonplace, especially when you start hanging out with space pirates with magical powers, a vampire and the occassional kitsune, so why shouldn't space dragons exist too? Where science may fail, magic can always fill in the gaps. But for me, these stories aren't just about the plot and the adventures poor Twist is dragged into (though I suspect he's starting to look forward to them now, he might find his old life a little boring, much as he complains otherwise), but it's about Twist and Jonas. They are such an interesting pair and I'm really interested to see where Thompson takes their relationship. And it seems with some hints dropped in this book, that there might be some interesting directions to go indeed. I'm glad there are still 8 more books to go, because so far I've enjoyed each one immensely. They are well worth the investment in physical copies of the book. The ebooks are of course cheaper but I don't like Amazon's proprietary format so I never buy mobi's and these cannot be found on Kobo epub. BTW, I love the consistency in the covers, each one representative of the specific story but at the same time using a familiar template.
May 2021
I've made it my yearly tradition now to read a Clockwork Twist book. It's lovely to return to this lighthearted series where all the characters are somehow just adorable. Now it was hard to believe, given I've been reading this books for six years, that only a few months have passed for Twist. Having a personality very similar to his, I don't know how he surived everything he did, but it is nice to have a protagonist to relate to, one who would rather read a book than save the world. And as we keep learning more about the characters, we learn that there is more to them that meets the eye, though in a bit of an annoying way, where everyone seems to know the "secret" but the protagonists and the reader. I won't say much to avoid spoilers, as I get deeper into the series they really build on each other, but I look forward to reading another next year. And why do you ask do I not read them all at once if I enjoy them so much? Well, I don't want them to run out, and there are only 12 after all! To keep it going longer, I'm taking my time :)
May 2022
Here we learn about Aazzi's family, a vampire conclave in Africa. I thought we might learn even more, but we only get to Africa after about halfway through the book, since at the start the gang taking a break in Hawaii and then need to take trip halfway around the world to come to Aazzi's aid. But you know what, I don't necessarily read these books for the plots (not that it was that bad, but more on the vampire and less floating about in airships might have been good), but it's for the relationship between Twist and Jonas. It's the kind of thing people enjoyed about Aziraphale and Crowley in Good Omens. It's somehow blatantly obvious that they are lovers, but they aren't and may never be, physical about it. Maybe soulmates is a better word, something that goes beyond even love itself. Two broken people making each other whole. Can't wait till next year when I can read the next one!
May 2023
In this one, which is not a surprise given the title, we start to learn about Twist's family. Brought up as an orphan he never knew his parents, but that didn't mean nobody else knew who they were. Also the nature of Sights is explained, and also why Jonas and Twist have such powerful ones that also make them suffer. A lot gets explained but there is plenty for other books to continue to fill in.
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