Rutkoski's 'Cabinet Of Wonders' Inspired By Prague Clock

Young-adult-fantasy author Marie Rutkoski told SCI FI Wire that her novel The Cabinet of Wonders was inspired by Prague's astronomical clock and the legend of its maker.

"[It] is a feat of technology and beauty I've admired too many times to count," Rutkoski said in an interview. "But I'll always remember the first time I saw it, because my Czech cousin David was with me and explained the legend of the clock: that the man who commissioned it had the eyes of the clockmaker gouged out so that he could never build anything like it again."

Years later, Rutkoski thought about the Czech legend, and The Cabinet of Wonders began to take shape, she said. In the book, 12-year-old Petra Kronos is waiting for the day when she, like her father, can move metal with her mind and build extraordinary machines.

"Her father has been commissioned by the young prince of Bohemia to design a clock in the center of faraway Prague, but when it's finished the prince removes and enchants the clockmaker's eyes, deciding to wear them himself," Rutkoski said. "When Petra discovers that the prince has blinded her father, she and her mechanical tin spider run away to Prague, hoping to sneak into the prince's castle and steal her father's eyes back."

In Rutkoski's version of Renaissance Bohemia, magic is rare, inherited and specific. "People are born with only one magical talent, which often involves the ability to influence a material substance (like metal, glass or fire), or it can be purely mental (such as being able to see the future)," she said. "Magic usually manifests itself in the elite upper class. It begins to appear when people are about 14 years old, which is also the age when children become adults."

A lot of research on children in Renaissance society went into Rutkoski's novel, from pediatric manuals to very imaginative pamphlets featuring children with supernatural powers. "These pamphlets were basically the 16th-century equivalent of a 'Bat Boy Found in Cave!' tabloid," Rutkoski said. "Some Renaissance people believed in magic, so whenever I read a yellowed document about prophetic children or a woman who gave birth to 365 mouse-sized babies, I could never tell whether the writer thought it was fact or fiction."

An excerpt of the book is available on Rutkoski's Web site, and a sample of the audiobook is available on the publisher's Web site.

-John Joseph Adams