Clockwork of Absence

A smart, well-crafted meditation on identity and commodified memory. The worldbuilding — minutes traded at street kiosks, wages in hours clipped from shifts, tins of saved hours beneath coils of spring — is efficiently sketched and feels lived-in rather than expository. The image of the photograph whose name has been ‘painted out’ is a clever, recurring motif that ties Rowan’s clockmaking skills to the story’s ethical question: what are you willing to spend to keep someone whole? The brass mnemonic device is an elegant piece of speculative tech: tactile, mechanical, and morally ambiguous. Pacing is mostly steady; the scenes in the shop (the radio murmuring weather to brass gears, Mara’s knock with bread and rain) are some of the strongest, human moments. If you want a story that uses urban-fantasy trappings to interrogate time and selfhood rather than just dazzle with gadgets, this is worth reading.

Clockwork of Absence is the kind of small, uncanny book that sticks in the ribcage. From the first paragraph I could feel Rowan’s shop: skylight cupping winter light, the smell of oil, the chorus of desynchronized clocks. That scene where one clock “skips a beat” and the photograph’s name slides away — I had to stop reading for a minute. The prose treats memory like a physical thing, tangible and fragile, which makes the discovery of the brass mnemonic device feel both inevitable and devastating. I loved how the city’s kiosks trading minutes make a literal economy out of intimacy; the Exchange is chillingly believable. Rowan’s choice to pay a personal price to restore a life hits hard because the character work is so honest — you feel the cost in every tightened sentence. This is atmospheric, humane, and quietly heartbreaking. Highly recommend if you like thoughtful urban fantasy that lingers.

There’s a quiet intelligence to Clockwork of Absence that slowly tightens like a well-wound spring. The opening is exemplary: domestic detail — the skylight, grandfather clocks across the lane, a radio that prefers to murmur the weather — establishes not just setting but a philosophy of time as material. Rowan’s tactile relationship to memory (the grooves that recorded hands and hesitations, the tin of saved hours) makes his later choices feel earned; when he uncovers the brass mnemonic device and confronts the Exchange, the stakes are moral as much as plot-driven. I appreciated the book’s restraint — it never over-explains the system of traded hours, letting you infer the cruelty of that economy from small moments (commuters with hollow eyes, kiosks clacking). The emotional core — the cost Rowan pays to restore a life — lands because the characters are fully present in the pages. If there’s a complaint, it’s that I wanted to linger longer in certain relationships (Mara’s warmth, the photograph’s backstory), but that’s also a testament to how invested the prose made me. A thoughtful, somber piece that blends urban fantasy with human-scale tragedy.

I wanted to love this more than I did. The premise — a near-future city where hours and memories are currency — is promising, but the execution leans on a few too many familiar beats. The corporate Exchange feels like a stock dystopian shorthand rather than a fully realized institution; its motives and mechanisms are sketched rather than shown, which makes some confrontations feel undercut. The brass mnemonic device, invoked as a crucial artifact, sometimes comes across as a convenient plot engine rather than something earnestly earned — a touch of deus ex machina. Pacing drags in the middle: the shop scenes are vivid and well-written, but the story stalls after the discovery and before the payoff, which saps momentum. I also wanted more on the rules of the time-economy — how do people survive if minutes are so literally spent? There are beautiful sentences and a genuinely affecting image or two (the clock that skips a beat, the photograph painted out), but overall the arc felt a bit predictable and the emotional payoffs too telegraphed. With tighter plotting and deeper stakes for the Exchange, this could have been a stronger book.

I didn’t expect to cry about a pocket watch, but here we are. 😂 The scene where Rowan runs his thumb along the case and can’t summon the name under the magnifying glass? Chef’s kiss. The language is tactile — you can almost smell the oil and hear the offbeat ticking — and the world where people literally trade minutes is such a cool, dark idea. Mara popping in with bread and rain felt real, small, needed. The corporate Exchange is a nice villain: sleek, transactional, and morally bankrupt. Short, sharp, and oddly tender. Read it on a rainy afternoon.