So, since I've been reading YA fantasy lately, I decided I would like to reread Storm Thief, by Chris Wooding. I read it the first time so long ago, I didn't remember much about the story, so it was almost a completely fresh experience.
Rail and Moa are teenage* orphans living in a ghetto for the poor, in a city of decaying ancient technologies. Because the poor in the ghettos have no chance to escape or to better themselves, many of them turn to crime. Rail and Moa scrape by as thieves working for a cruel mistress of thieves. When they are sent to steal a piece of valuable ancient technology and decide to keep it for themselves, they are forced to go on the run. While they are devoted to each other, this is not a teenage romance. Their relationship is strictly platonic. (There are hints that Rail might like something more, but it's explicitly stated that Moa knows she doesn't feel for him like a girl feels for a boy. He obviously knows that, too, and so never presses for a different relationship.) So those who turn squeamish at the thought of romance can relax and enjoy the story, because that never develops.
Well, so the characters are thieves, which I have mentioned elsewhere is a trope I am pretty tired of. But to be fair, this was written before the YA fantasy genre was nearly so awash in juvenile thieves. Also, the plot is exciting, and the setting intriguing and original. The city is plagued by revenants (which are a kind of energy being that kills humans and possesses the bodies) and by "probability storms" which sweep through the city at random intervals and create random changes. Buildings and individuals may be picked up and dropped off in a different part of the city. Streets are rearranged. A right-handed person becomes left-handed overnight. Internal organs may be turned to glass, etc. Rail is forced to wear a respirator because one such storm caused his lungs to malfunction. The storms (which are generated by an ancient piece of technology called the Chaos Engine), also create the revenants. There is no place where one can escape the storms, because the energies they create can penetrate stone, metal, and earth. There is no way to escape the city, because it is an island guarded by battleships and murderous devices which chase down boats and destroy them. And besides, everyone is told that there is no place else except the city and the ocean which surrounds it.
Vago is a manufactured creature, the only one of his kind, referred to as a "golem", though he is more like a cyborg. He lives with a cruel toymaker and his detestable—and I do mean detestable—little granddaughter. When he tires of the abuse and conceives a desire to find his maker and discover why he was created, he runs away. It is established that the toymaker did not create him, because he was deposited in the toymaker's workshop by one of the probability storms. Vago has only the vaguest memory of where he was before, but he knows that it was a very different place from where he is now. When he runs away, he soon encounters and joins forces with Rail and Moa.
Because of all the technology involved, one might call it science fantasy, except the technology is so fantastical and the science behind it never explained (to be fair, all the knowledge behind the technology was lost centuries ago), it is really much more like magic. The only major element of the story that is recognizably science-fictional is the cyborg, but since Vago is always referred to as a golem, which is traditionally a creature brought to life by magical arts ... I'd call the story fantasy with science-fictional trappings. Which is, of course, fine by me.
The plot is rather more complex than I have described it, but I think this gives a fair idea of what the story is about and what the setting is like. I enjoyed it, and it was definitely worth a reread.
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*One assumes they are teenagers because the book is YA, and the characters are identified as a boy and a girl, but in a land of no seasons, where the people have lost a clear concept of time (the word "year" has become meaningless), no one knows--or seems to care—exactly how old they are.
