His struggle between trying to be a good soldier, and his own personal desires is a fascinating one that unfolds in the course of the book. Internally, he burns with an ambition he does not always admit to. Outwardly, he presents himself as a cog in the machine of the technocratic dictatorship of The Line, the power behind massive railroad-engine-like machines and their infrastructure. Her journey is paralleled by an agent of The Line and an agent of The Gun, seeking that dread secret, seemingly held by one of the residents of The House Dolorous. Living in the solid East, a clear analogue of Europe, she is persuaded by a letter from a sanitarium, The House Dolorous, to head West to employ her skills at psychology amongst the wounded and sick there.

It’s as if Gilman decided to write a hybrid fusion of Epic Fantasy, Steampunk and a Western, and put his own distinctive take on reality to it.

A secondary world that is inspired by America, and feels a lot like the American West, but isn’t. The demons of The Gun and the powers behind The Line. The Half-Made World is an extremely difficult novel to classify in terms of subgenre. The fate of the Half-Made World, or its future, is seemingly at stake, if the holder of the secret could only remember it. As a Doctor of Psychology makes her way to a hospital at the edge of the world, the revelation of a possible weapon capable of defeating the Engines of The Line or the powers of The Gun send agents of both in the same direction. Here, two arcane powers, the technological remorseless of The Line, and the chaotic nature of The Gun, compete and collide over the fates of those who would settle The Half-Made World. Beyond the mighty Opal mountains and the civilized worlds of the kingdoms of Koenigswald and Juddua, lies the Half-Made World, where reality is still fluid, and in the uttermost west, turns toward formlessness and lack of definition.

The half made world