©2025 Fable Group Inc.
3.0 

Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti

By Genevieve Valentine
Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti by Genevieve Valentine digital book - Fable

Why read on Fable?

Discover social reading

Chat inside the ebook with emojis, comments and more

Annotate with notes, tabs, and highlights

Share or keep your notes private with our annotation features

Support the World Literacy Foundation

We donate 20% of every book sale to help children learn to read

Publisher Description

Come inside and take a seat; the show is about to begin . .

Outside any city still standing, the Mechanical Circus Tresaulti sets up its tents. Crowds pack the benches to gawk at the brass-and-copper troupe and their impossible feats: Ayar the Strong Man, the acrobatic Grimaldi Brothers, fearless Elena and her aerialists who perform on living trapezes. War is everywhere, but while the Circus is performing, the world is magic.

That magic is no accident: Boss builds her circus from the bones out, molding a mechanical company that will survive the unforgiving landscape.

But even a careful ringmaster can make mistakes.

Two of Tresaulti's performers are trapped in a secret standoff that threatens to tear the Circus apart, just as the war lands on their doorstep. Now they must fight a war on two fronts: one from the outside, and a more dangerous one from within . . . 

35 Reviews

3.0
“A highly imaginative debut with lyrical prose that occasionally hits one too many flat notes to really shine, this is not the novel I expected to get from a glance at it's cover. While the concepts intrigue, this is like being presented with great looking feast to find all the meat is dry and the deserter is merely spun-sugar floss. Pretty, but no real substance. I think we could have done with less lyrical pros gimmickry to get at the heart of the story, which is what matters in the end. All the technical tricks and lyricism in the world won't save an empty story, and sadly, I don't think this one delivers. Not bad, but not good. Hopefully she'll work on giving us more actual information next time and less poetry-in-prose descriptions and tricks. There's definitely a story in here, and I wanted to know it-- but by the end I was finishing it simply to finish it and be done. Not bad enough to abandon, but not good enough to recommend to all but the most dire-in-need steampunk fans.”
“I loved it. It's the circus book I've been waiting for all these years. Some came close, some missed the point entirely. Some had interesting lore but lacked interesting characters. Some had too much romance. Some tried too hard to be eerie and whimsical and if there's something that has to come naturally to succeed, as naturally as breathing, it's the eerie and the whimsical. This book had everything I didn't really know I wanted and I am so grateful I managed to find it in the oceans of books out there. I was immersed withing a couple of pages, and the ambiance caught me so much that I didn't even blink at the three different types of narration (first, second and third person). I know it could have bothered me, not to the dnf, but it's something I would have complained about, probably hmpf-ing at every change of chapters while reading. What I loved the most was probably the characters. I had the feeling to already know them but they were at the same time completely new. Some were lovable at first sight but most were not and that's where it gets brilliant, it's when you actually care for the assholes. And I use "asshole" as it is, not as a mean to say "cool but bad tempered". Just kind of... debatable people, who are not bad but not good either. But the characters would have been less without the ambiance, and the ambiance has everything to do with the writing so there's that to praise too. Thank you for this book, my first 5 stars in forever. I want to forget it and discover it all over again.”

Start a Book Club

Start a public or private book club with this book on the Fable app today!

FAQ

Do I have to buy the ebook to participate in a book club?

Why can’t I buy the ebook on the app?

How is Fable’s reader different from Kindle?

Do you sell physical books too?

Are book clubs free to join on Fable?

How do I start a book club with this book on Fable?

Error Icon
Save to a list
0
/
30
0
/
100
Private List
Private lists are not visible to other Fable users on your public profile.
Notification Icon
Fable uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB