Lilibet Bombshell's Reviews > The Second Sight of Zachary Cloudesley

This book is simultaneously one of the most adorable books I’ve ever read and one of the saddest. It’s precocious and it’s discomforting. It made me cry several times.

The Second Sight of Zachary Cloudesley is a book about family, for good or for ill. Family isn’t always pretty and it isn’t always kind. They make mistakes and they are sometimes disagreeable indeed. For all their trespasses though, they are family, and sometimes family is worth fighting for. Sometimes they’re worth crossing oceans for.

I have a huge spot for magical realism. It’s probably my favorite genre to read. This book mixes magical realism with historical fiction set in the latter half of the 18th century, as America is forming and the Ottoman Empire is ruling Constantinople. In London, Abel Cloudesley is a renowned clock and automata maker. His son, Zachary, is a genius with an unquenchable appetite for knowledge. He also seems to have inherited his mother’s gift of second sight, which Abel tries to wave away due to Zachary’s almost preternatural intellectual abilities because he doesn’t want his son to be seen as any more different than he already is. Just as Zachary is suffused with love for his father and desperately clamors for his attention, Abel only wants Zachary to be safe and he’s steeped in guilt that he may not have been the best father and doesn’t think he can give Zachary everything he needs. So he sends Zachary to live with his Great Aunt in the country on her estate where she can use her resources to indulge and educate Zachary’s mind away from the filth and dangers of London.

From this point, this book explores themes on gender identity, found family, education, religion, gender equality, politics, war, conservation, LGBTQ issues, adolescent rebellion, and socioeconomics. Our characters age and travel. Some get sick and some inevitably die (this is before germ theory, people).

Every character in this book learns more than one lesson, and most of them are hard ones. There is love in these pages, though, and that makes it worth the read. If there were not love this book would be too sad. It’s a great read if you like books about automata and historical fiction set during the Ottoman Empire.

I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. This review was written without compensation. Thank you.

File Under: Historical Fiction/LGBTQ Fiction/Magical Realism