CREDIT: WORDFIRE, INC., AND PRATT MUSIC (2015)
With a single drop of blood, Marinda Peake can get your entire life story. The trick is to make it one worthy of Clockwork Lives.

Written by Kevin J. Anderson and Neil Peart, Clockwork Lives tells the story of Marinda Peake, a young woman who was living a perfectly content life. Was, that is, until her father died. As his last wish he sent her on a wild quest to collect enough stories to fill a leather-bound book, a book called Clockwork Lives.

With pages treated by an alchemical solution, all it takes is a single drop of blood for a person’s entire story to appear on the pages, the true and compact version, anyway. Marinda quickly discovers a problem; most people’s lives are only a paragraph or two long. Realizing that all the lives from her small town will only fill a few pages, she sets off, and her own story immediately becomes far more interesting.

The collection of stories that weave through Clockwork Lives are a large part of the books charm. Captivating tales of love and loss, often interconnected in surprising ways, sprawled across the pages with their own type of magic. As Marinda and the reader learn these stories, a certain amount of personal growth is almost inevitable. A hunger for more tales, more wonders, grows stronger and stronger.

Saying the stories are captivating fails to really convey the reality of the words. Each tale is one of true passion, clearly written by someone who understands what it is to feel that all-consuming love of a thing in one’s soul. This is most clear in The Percussor’s Tale, where music you can’t hear seems to float off the page, surrounding the reader in the drumbeats of the universe.

There’s also a clear understanding that no one is defined by a disability. The Percussor, a man with a degenerative nerve disease, invents a machine to play the music he cannot. The Astronomer, paraplegic after a fall broke his back, had designed a perfect working model of the solar system. Their conditions are part of them, yes, but only a small part compared to the wonders of their minds and hearts.

Not only are the stories amazing, they’re also accompanied by gorgeous illustrations by Nick Robles. In one image, Robles manages to capture the pure essence of an individual’s passion and life. Stylistically perfect, these illustrations add something beyond words to an already incredible collection.

Each tale in Clockwork Lives demonstrates an overarching theme; we are all human, and it’s our passions that make our stories great. Those who are content, who live a typical life and never dream of more, only get a sentence or two. It’s only through our trials and dreams that we get a longer story. It’s only by imagining the unimaginable, and then reaching for it, that we give meaning to our lives.

With a combination of short stories and overarching plot, Clockwork Lives provides insight into the nature of humanity, into what makes us more and what makes us the same. With every page, one thing is abundantly clear: this is a book that demands to be read.