The Engine's Child

In this murky, unpleasant novel, set on a world almost entirely covered with water, Moth, a preternaturally gifted young woman, defies her priestly vows for love. She quickly finds herself pregnant by her clandestine lover and the pawn of political and religious machinations on all sides. Secret societies battle, one obsessed with returning to a possibly mythical perfect world and the other driven to build the titular engine, a piece of magical technology intended to harness the spirit of the planet and drive ships out to sea in search of new land. Pretentious fantasy vocabularies and didactic cardboard characters weigh down the narrative. Worst of all, bratty, unlikable Moth is not so much an unreliable narrator as a straightup liar, claiming ignorance of crucial facts only to later reveal that she knew all along. Readers struggling to know what to believe will quickly realize they have no reason to care. (Nov.)