The Starlight Watchmaker by Lauren James

Hugo suddenly felt strange all over. He realised with a shock that he was happy. For the first time in ages, Hugo felt happy. It wasn’t terrible at all, talking to Dorian and getting to know him. It was actually nice.

Oh my goodness, what a gem of a find! I stumbled across the sequel story, The Deep-Sea Duke, on Scribd (what an entrancing cover, oh my gosh) and read a couple of pages before realising it was the second in the series, so I quickly zipped back and picked up this one. It’s so, so good! Charming, sweet, wholesome, feel-good. And it really just confirms for me how much I adore novellas. Smaller stories that pack a punch are just such wonderful creations! This book moves at a cracking pace, but the world-building is exceptional and slick. I’m really impressed.

The different types of aliens and planets are so creative and diverse! One of the characters that you meet is an island well on her way to becoming a planet. One of the main characters is an android. The other survives off algae grown in a tank in their enormous penthouse room. The author’s descriptions are just phenomenal.

The library was full of different bushes and shrubs lined up in rows. To choose a book, you walked down the stacks until you found the right plant and picked one of its flowers. Each petal unfurled to become a page, and black veins on it formed writing. The longer the book, the larger and fluffier the flower, with hundreds of petals covered in writing.

I also really loved how much agency each character gets, and the androids’ storyline was especially poignant. The Starlight Watchmaker reminded me a bit of Blade Runner 2049 and To Be Taught, If Fortunate, at least in terms of themes. Obviously vastly different fictional universes, but the emphasis on the humanity of androids and aliens is emphasised in The Starlight Watchmaker in a similar way to Blade Runner 2049’s depiction of android falling in love; and the importance of alien life in To Be Taught, If Fortunate. And let’s not forget the CUTE FACTOR.

Hugo and Dorian are the sweetest characters. Huge is a shy, uncertain android who was abandoned by his previous owner with no warning or explanation. He described watching the Earl’s ship fly away and it’s so, so heartbreaking. In contrast, Dorian is the son of a duke with wealth enough to afford a watch that will take him back in time. And it’s one such broken watch that brings the duke and the watchmaker together. THEY ARE SO ADORBS.

This is a must-read for sci-fi fans!