A stunningly powerful and original work unlike anything I have ever read before. It alternates between straight printed text, like any conventional book and full double-page, wordless images. And it moves seamlessly between the two: a given chapter might begin with text but then continue the story with images (e.g., the text describes the character walking halfway across the station and then pictures show him walking across the other half). What makes this so effective is that it forces you to focus on both -- you can't rely on the images to illustrate the text or the text to expalain the images, both are seperate. And unlike a graphic novel where you can end up paying more attention to the words without fully appreciating the pictures, here all of the pictures cover the full two pages and demand your focus and attention.

This original medium is ideally suited to the setting and story, an orphan boy at the beginning of the 20th Century who lives in a hidden room in a Paris train station and tends the clocks. He is also busily trying to repair and automaton his dead father retrieved from the wreckage of a museum. His run in with the owner of a mechanical toy store begins a series of adventures and revelations about imagination, creativity and the birth of the cinema.

At 550 pages, it is praising the book to say that the it feels epic in scope but that it actually covers a small space, time and limited number of characters and incidents. But these are expanded out with minute the minute and careful attention, especially through the many pages of the book that are drawing.