Tudor, a 17-year-old bookish Romanian, lives in poverty with his mother and two young sisters. One day he sets out with his faithful dog Nero to sneak a sack of chestnuts from the forbidden tree groves at the edge of land owned by his ruler and landlord – the baron. After dodging a fight with the baron’s soldiers, Tudor comes across a strange, hypnotic object. When he falls into the cave where it’s hidden, he senses his life will be forever changed. Nonetheless, Tudor returns with his two best friends: Roli, a wealthy Hungarian, and Sami, an impoverished Romani outcast, to hide the object at his Transylvanian home.
Tudor quickly learns the artifact alters nearly everyone who comes near it. Some people die of strokes, others lose their minds, and some turn power-mad and violent. Soon powerful forces fight to control the mysterious device, believing it gives them the power to change history.

Alexandru Czimbor’s THE SOUL MACHINES is a well-written book that crosses many genres and subgenres and reads more like a supernatural, YA coming-of age-story than historical fiction. The author employs strong, clear lyrical imagery with an advanced literary style to create a fantasy world that adeptly paints his vision of an alternate history and its dynamic conflicts and battle scenes spring to life.  This is buoyed by exacting research and historical detail that grounds the fantasy, making it believable and the romance and unrequited love are engaging. But the book suffers from an excess of unnecessary details, polemics, and insertions of historical background that fill page after page and are jarring interruptions that undercut its solid plot and authentic setting. These touch on an eclectic range of themes including class struggles, sexism, human rights, political and religious ideologies as well as the nature of good and evil among humankind. The problem is, very little of this intrusive rhetoric serves the plot and it ruins the story’s flow. Most of the book’s core characters, the three teen friends, their foil; an evil baron, and their champion; a humanitarian count, are believable and compelling. Many chapters launch with the prophetic dreams of protagonist Tudor’s Romani buddy Sami, sparked after he touches the artifact and then falls into a coma. When he wakes up, the disjointed, frightening dreams that haunt him make for excellent foreshadowing. However, many read like stream-of-consciousness rambles.

A well-written book that crosses many genres, Alexandru Czimbor’s THE SOUL MACHINES features an engaging plot, compelling characters, and intriguing take on history.

~Robin Harvey for IndieReader