This was probably one of the hardest books I've read. I think it's interesting, the way the prose almost has its own rhythm, especially at the start, and the images we get are so jarring, that it's almost impressive, but in the long run the story just flew over my head

Disjointed, rambling and fragmentary, The Peace Machine is an intriguing collage of Verne-inspired ideas, but ultimately, as a novel, a thorough disappointment.

Mumcu's book has only a roughly sketched outline of a plot and characters and relies heavily on what can be described as tropes of Oriental or Orientalized nature - heavy-handed stereotypes which serve only as a very superficial decoration, offering nothing in terms of cultural diversity or understanding. We've got the lying, pitiless Frenchman, the beautiful, lewd and manipulative Frenchwoman, and the main protagonist - the naive yet cunning Turk capable of feats of inhuman strength. There's of course a circus, a fire dervish, a lion tamer, a conspiracy and illegal arms smuggling mafia, a ruthless arms dealer/spy who poses as an ambassador's aide, a melancholy Serb prone to instantly falling in love inevitably ending in heartbreak... whatever far-fetched and overused trope you can think of, it's probably in there, not making any sense.

I believe the author tried to infuse his novel with a sense of comedy, or irony, but failed. It might have been a translation problem, but having read the whole thing, I don't think so.

Not recommended.

I have received a copy of this novel from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My thanks.

i really enjoyed reading this book, the characters were great and I really enjoyed going on this scifi novel.

I did not enjoy this book. The premise of the story was intriguing, but the method of narration was not one I enjoyed. Almost all of the action in this novel was told in retrospect, and from such a distance that it was really hard to care, even if the development was a significant one.
The plot was confusing and jumped around a lot, and the characters in this novel (while intriguing!) were hard to connect with. The story at times reminded me of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Ernest (and there was a reference within the novel that made me think this was deliberate), however, the lack of character motivation made The Peace Machine fall flat for me.
Celine was an intriguing character, and various settings throughout the novel (notably the circus) could have been amazing opportunities to have the characters interact with each other in compelling ways; however, these opportunities never really came to fruition.
Even Dragan was an intriguing character, and I loved that the author didn’t shy away from having a male character that was a hopeless romantic. The abrupt way in which Dragan was introduced, and also the way in which he concluded his character arc, were also disappointing to me.
The conclusion was abrupt and vague, and there was more than one occasion where I wanted to skip paragraphs of repetitive, pseudo-poetic imagery to get to the point, quite often to find that there wasn’t one.
The world building in The Peace Machine was likewise a bit of a mess. The idea of magnetic mountains and Celal’s mysterious strength never really came into play, and while the idea of electro-magnetic souls was a fascinating one, it was never truly explained or exploited to good effect within the novel.
All in all, while there were aspects of this book that definitely appealed to me, and I’m not opposed to an overly verbose cast, The Peace Machine was just too hard to get engrossed in for me to be able to recommend it.

Well, not exactly what I was hoping to read. It was lauded as in the tradition of Dumas and Verne. I expected some sort of steam punk story, but it was a rather dull. A long story that didn't make sense to me and was rather tough to get through.

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest and unbiased review. All opinions are my own and based on the Kindle ARC of the book.

I read the English translation (translator Mark David Wyers, 2018) of this book, and I would have appreciated having some footnotes to explain terms and context. I love magic realism, and I like to think I like historical fiction, but I feel like I was missing some of the context necessary to understand what the story might have been trying to say.

I wouldn’t describe the Peace Machine as a single story, but a series of experiences featuring a melancholic trickster hero for part of the book, and a different melancholic hero for the rest. The story begins with Celal, an orphan who chants tongue-twisters as he runs to stop himself from stumbling - and he is almost constantly chanting for all the trouble he gets into - until an act of kindness leads his luck to turn and he is adopted into a life of luxury. His fortune doesn’t last for long (at least, not in the narrative), and he stumbles into a global conspiracy, the Serbian army, and a circus. The aim of the conspiracy is to build a peace machine and start an age of world peace.

Once Celal discovers the conspiracy, there’s a sense of constant high energy and distraction barely caged by a plot. There’s conspiracies within the conspiracy and supporting conspiracies outside but related to the peace machine (naturally). Characters alternate between strongly political speeches and rambling anecdotes or bits of trivia in a way that almost feels like they’re the hipsters of 1900 and perhaps a little bored with the plot. The peace machine is almost incidental to the story: it’s very clearly just a machine that can be rebuilt if it is destroyed. Halfway through the book we are introduced to Dragan Petrovic, and the story switches to his point of view for some time. I felt that Dragan was a better reader proxy for me as he seemed to alternate between being proud of and in love with his world (though I related less to his habit of falling in love with the first woman he saw), and irritatedly confused with the story.

Celal discovers the conspiracy through the script for a play, and I wonder if the story would be improved if it was entirely a play, or if it was a longer, more thorough exploration of the world. Several of the character speeches in the book felt more appropriate to a script.


BECHDEL TEST
The Peace Machine fails the Bechdel test: all women in the book are love interests, and I don’t recall a scene with two women speaking to each other.

I loved the description of the story, the idea of it was amazing. I wanted to love this book.
What little I could see of the world, I felt was rich and had potential.
However, I couldn't get into the character at all. I felt the writing was very jumpy and jagged, jumping too quickly for you to get a feel for anything going on. The sentence structure was strange and while that could be intentional, it made it difficult to follow through with Celal's thoughts and actions. It also felt like a great amount of time was compressed into a very small section, people introduced and then gone, without any explanation for what's going on or why they were even mentioned.
Overall, I was disappointed.

Thank you to Netgalley & the Publisher for giving me a review copy!

One of those rare instances were I legit have no idea what happened in a book. And according to other reviews I am not alone on this. The entire story feels very disconnected, and the events just feel like they're randomly put together with no transition.

I wanted so badly to like this, but I couldn't. And for a book being marketed as Steampunk, there was a definite lack of Steampunk elements, and overall is was just whimsical in a historical setting. Good ideas, but not the best execution.