An eerie, mind-bending thriller of mysticism, menace, and dazzling imagination.
Domowitz’s third entry in the Mechanic’s Diary series fuses Jewish mysticism with high-tech speculation, sending an artificial man into a maze of secret rituals and dangerous ideas. When his young charge is kidnapped, Hanzi the Mechanic follows the trail to a cloistered Hasidic court where religious law condemns any artificial being to death. To stay alive, he must hide the truth of his own creation—even as a legendary golem prowls the community, able to recognize what he is and eager to claim him.
Hanzi’s journey unfolds as both a rescue mission and a philosophical trial. He is caretaker and experiment, mechanic and miracle, forced to weigh the sanctity of life against the inevitability of death while hiding his own artificial origins in a community that would destroy him for existing. The Void, a metaversal landscape of endless crucifixions, waterboarding machines, and mud pits that boil and freeze at once, provides a physical vocabulary for the book’s deepest concerns.
Domowitz’s prose is sharp and hypnotic, mixing the textures of dark fantasy with the pacing of a techno-thriller. His characters—fanatical Baal and Sām and the sly and curious Avi—are drawn with quick, decisive strokes, while Hanzi himself carries the book with a mix of vulnerability and stubborn resolve. By the end, the kidnapping feels almost secondary to the novel’s larger meditation on creation, responsibility, and the human craving to make something that can answer back. Readers new to the series should start with book one to fully navigate its shifting worlds.
A reality-bending mix of mysticism and alchemy.
Pub date September 16, 2025
ISBN 979-8299435443
Price $9.99 (USD) Paperback, $2.99 Kindle edition
