[Book Review] The Artificer’s Knot — Eric Lewis
Steam-Punky Blinders?
The Artificer’s Knot is what you get if you wrote a season of Peaky Blinders in a steampunk-adjacent world. A tale of a rising upstart climbing the gangster underbelly with nothing but his wits and guiles, with instances of unlikely friendships and entirely likely betrayals, this novel is a paint-by-numbers story with all the requisite twists and turns.
After a bit of digging around, I find that The Artificer’s Knot is a prequel of sorts to Lewis’ 2023 novel The Heron Rampant which is also part of his Heron Kings series. However, this novel is self-contained but has worldbuilding elements that I assume carry forward into his other books.
The Artificer’s Knot follows the tale of our protagonist Ran (Randyll Tephius), the titular artificer (something between an engineer and a scientist). He is booted from his University for carrying out potentially hazardous (and potentially paradigm-breaking) research. He finds himself picked up by Nebb, one of the two kingpin bosses of the city’s criminal underworld, who wants to use his brilliance to maximize his profits. Of course, Ran has plans to get back at the hidden hands at the University that cursed him to his fate, as well as chase his dreams.
The world in The Artificer’s Knot is low-fantasy, steampunk-adjacent, with next to no magical elements. The steampunk elements are also extremely barebones and no innovative thought is put into creating interesting steampunk elements (like Mortal Engines, or Senlin Ascends). The general vibe has several parallels to the hit show Peaky Blinders with its characterization and basic plot themes but lacks any of the show’s depth, nuance, or complexity. Instead, we get a lukewarm plot with caricaturish one-dimensional wooden characters that are incredibly difficult to root for.
The major players are Nebb, a “benevolent tyrant” gangsta boss, who had perhaps two fingers worth of depth to his characterization beyond the “you can't betray the King, I am the King” bravado, and Filene (play on Feline?) serves as Ran’s romantic interest, with little to know development. A pale comparison to Thomas Shelby’s counterpart Grace. There is a smattering of other stereotypical thugs, mustache-twirling aristocrats, and uber-capable scary Copper. But none of these characters are particularly novel or noteworthy.
The worst character is our protagonist Ran. Ran’s predilection to be an expert at any engineering task or scientific problem is so exquisite that it borders on savant. As an engineer, I am keenly aware that NOBODY is so acutely able to look at systems and devise solutions as deftly as Ran does throughout the novel, with little to no testing, no errors, and complete accuracy.
It became incredibly difficult to relate or invest in Ran’s character development as he was written to be so infallible, that at no point was there ever any tension created with regards to his wellbeing, even though he is put through a few timid and stereotypical hitches. A walking Gary Stu with Deus Ex Machina-esque powers, his entire character brief is nigh unbelievable and breaks immersion.
Along with Ran’s god-tier, immersion-breaking prowess, is the pacing of the novel. It was unclear how many days/weeks/months were spanned in the plot of the novel, but the passage of time felt eerily quick, making the plot beats very checkpoint-y and none of the high points in the structure felt earned. The short length of The Artificer’s Knot works against its plotting, as there was simply not enough space afforded to the plot or the characters to develop fruitfully. The conclusion felt extremely rushed and entirely unrewarding. With so many beats forcing the reader to compare the novel to Peaky Blinders, the difference in quality is even more stark and impossible to ignore.
The story would have been better served either as a duology or trilogy, or exploring a much smaller plot scope. However, I provide two caveats to this critique; Firstly, my own bias towards preferring longer trilogies makes that format my default yardstick for plot depth so standalone always feels a tad empty to me. Secondly, since discovering that The Artificer’s Knot fits within the larger Heron Kings series, it puts the standalone in a different perspective, and the format does work relatively well as a self-contained prequel of sorts.
All things considered, The Artificer’s Knot is a quick, fun, read, but readers should not expect any genre-breaking twists, or wow moments in either plot, characters, or world.
As an aside, do yourselves a favor and read Peter McLean’s War For The Rose Throne series for a compelling fantasy gangster/espionage thriller. I understand that he helped as an advisor to Eric Lewis for his series, but we must defer to the Master Gangster!
