The Curator by Owen King

 

If I'd looked through all the blurbs, I would have seen one from an author I avoid, and I would probably have avoided this book--at least, I would have gone in with lower expectations. This book is cluttered, busy, and borderline disjointed; the afterword/acknowledgments mention there was a short story first, and this definitely reads like a 500-page novel with a short story entombed within it. The setting sits in an uncanny valley, real enough to sorta fit the real world but fantastic enough (in a vaguely steampunkish sense) to seem almost otherworldly; the hints of the real world bleeding into the setting do not really help. There are characters I found myself rooting for, but they're really not the mains--that's probably not a great sign.