This is a book with some really gorgeous elements and passages, but also some flaws. Its likely going to linger with me for a while, because it clarified some questions I have been pondering about female characters in books written by women but focused on men. I don't want to say more about that just yet, but after having read two Natasha Pulley books back to back I can say that she's very interested in writing about emotional friendship/relationships between men interrupted by tragic circumstances... which is a thing I enjoy reading about... while also feeling conflicted when female characters are pushed to the margins of the narrative. To get to the actual plot, this book is set in London in the 1880s. Thaniel Steepleton is a telegraph operator in a government office whose life has shrunk to encompass little more than his job, his commute, and sending money back home to his windowed sister- until the day he comes home to find a mysterious gold pocket watch left in his bedroom, which ends up saving his life during a terrorist bombing of Scotland Yard. He seeks out the watchmaker and finds Keita Mori, a Japanese immigrant and genius inventor. His shop on Filigree street is full of mechanical birds, glowing fireflies, a clockwork octopus and some of the most beautiful watches Thaniel has ever seen. He ends up befriending the lonely watchmaker, which complicates matters when Mori falls under police suspicions. Thaniel is asked to spy on his new friend... which might be impossible, as Mori is also a clairvoyant who can read pieces of the future with startling accuracy.

Pulley has done her research, including spending 19 months living in Japan on a scholarship to study that country in the tumultuous late 1800s. I hope that this means her representation of Japanese people and culture is fairly good, but I am not knowledgeable enough personally to say. This book is her first, and there are places were the plot drags- it takes 150 pages for all of the principle characters to finally met, and there are some other pacing issues in the conclusion. I enjoyed this book more than I might have because I had read her second novel, The Bedlam Stacks, already - its set in the same world and has one overlapping character, but is overall faster paced, more urgent and more magical. I'm not sure if I would have had as much investment in this one if I had read it alone. Overall, I'd only recommend it to people who enjoy a slow and strange read- people who liked The Essex Serpent and A Conspiracy of Truths. Don't read it if you get impatient with a debut author.