Will the Half-Made World ever be made?

I cannot imagine how the clockwork of the universe can exist without a clockmaker.
Voltaire

For my first introduction to Steampunk, I was very satisfied and really enjoyed The Half-Made World. It was interesting to see such contradictory ideas come together and intermingle. It was an epic battle of technology and western cultural ideals and the winner is still yet to be determined.

So here is a summary of what I liked:
- All the characters were flawed. Today I feel like Authors are writing these sickeningly perfect characters and I find it rather boring.
- The descriptions were amazing. See previous post.
- The Prologue was probably one of my favorite parts of the book. It really set the tone for the story.

What I thought was weak:
- I am going to have to say the ending. Everything builds up so fast in the beginning and I felt the story peeked to early. The last book kind of just strolled along. I am not saying it didn't have it's moments, but it would have been nice to have some climatic moment that brought things together more or answered some questions.

But, for those wondering, the book is very open ended because Gilman is planning on writing a sequel. And I would be very interested in seeing if the Half-Made World will ever be complete.

"That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." ... Except in the Half-Made World ...

"It was strictly speaking a rose, though of all things of the made world, it most closely resembled a flower, and of all flowers Liv knew, it most closely resembled a rose [...] It's petals formed a corolla that was rose like, yet iterated over and over, whorls withing whorls, past the point of ordinary botanical possibility [...] It smelled of electricity, and slightly of motor oil; and in it's heart ... this one had a delicate crisscrossing of golden wires, enclosing something minute and fleshy that pulsed with a steady beat."

The thing was hideous. It was ridiculous. It was beautiful. All those things at once, and none of them. It was not meant for her, and her opinions of it were beside the point. It would have been both futile and insulting to classify it; it was neither a rose nor a relative of the rose. It was perhaps in part the potentiality of a rose, or an alternative to the rose, or more likely something with no meaning at all....

Alas, you all know how much I love my quotes so I had to share probably my favorite from the book. One: I believe the whole description was wonderfully done. Two: I deeply related to it, especially what's in bold above.

I feel like we spend so much of our time classifying people, relationships, things, hopes, dreams etc., placing them into boxes and storing them on a shelf. WHY? Perhaps we are over analyzing life instead of LIVING it. Liv spent almost a whole page trying to compare the wondrous thing she found to something, although considered beautiful, paled in comparison to her discovery. I feel like her attempting to place such a wondrous creation into the Made World, devalued it. Instead of dissecting it, she should have just enjoyed it.

We spend too much time questioning things. Why am I here? Who am I supposed to be? How was this made? The chicken or the egg?

But there is a simple answer: Maybe we were never meant to know. Instead of questioning, the true answer might just lie in enjoying what we are given and living to the best of out abilities.

NB: I will be doing a final post as well soon. And I hope y'all enjoyed the book.