The Clockwork Ghost by Laura Ruby

Rating: 3/5

The Clockwork Ghost continues the adventures of Tess, Theo, and Jaime, as they navigate the riddles and mysteries surrounding the mysterious Cipher. Though, in this book, there’s less mysteries and more mysterious characters as the kids face a threatening organization (though they don’t know that until the end) who has some sort of mysterious goal (it’s not revealed, really) involving chimera animals such as Tess’s cat Nine.

Then there’s the appearance of a woman who Jaime apparently made up, but also didn’t make up…? And “the clockwork ghost” of the title, though it’s extremely unclear who/what that even is. And an ending twist that I was kinda disappointed by, but also not disappointed by…

So, basically, I had mixed feelings.

I really didn’t like the inclusion of the mysterious organization led by Duke Goodson—he and his cadre of blond women seemed entirely too absurd for the setting and tone and reminded me of exactly what I didn’t like about Maggie Stiefvater’s books. In addition, the ending twist made things much less like an alternate history and much more of some sort of time traveling adventure gone wrong (or right?). I liked half of the revelation, but not the other half, because I like my alternate histories to be alternate and not some sort of parallel universe/time traveling adventure with some sort of “make things right because today’s world is so terrible” message. 

And then there was some really awful action scenes combined with the mysterious made-up/but not made-up woman, who adds another mystery. I’m assuming she was supposed to be the clockwork ghost, but I’m not entirely sure because she wasn’t clockwork or a ghost.

I still mostly enjoyed the book, but I was disappointed by a lot of the plot reveals and the direction the book took at the end. I’ll read the third one, but it will take a lot more then what I got in this book for me to be satisfied by this trilogy in the end.

Info: Sequel to The Shadow Cipher; Laura Ruby; published 2019 by Walden Pond Press

Genre: Middle Grade, Science Fiction

Warnings: None.

Recommended Age Range: 8+