Doorstopper steampunk fantasy from British newcomer Hunt.Hunt's
world is a curious past-future blend of aerostats, mechanical
computers, psychic powers, self-willed steam-powered robots, Elder
gods, talking superweapons and more. When orphan Molly Templar,
sold from the local workhouse to a high-class bordello, starts
work, her first client turns out to be an assassin. Molly escapes
with the help of a steamman (she can fix damaged machines in a
trice) and eventually learns from King Steam that she has a rare
blood type - and that every person that shared it has been
murdered. Elsewhere, another seemingly ordinary orphan, Oliver
Brooks, lived four years inside the otherworldly "feymist"; since
even brief exposure to feymist causes terrifying psychic powers to
develop, the authorities are deeply suspicious of him. (Those less
fortunate, whose powers develop, are cruelly enslaved or
permanently consigned to dungeons.) Oliver returns home to find his
uncle's household massacred, with disreputable spook Harry Stave
the sole survivor. Together Harry and Oliver flee for their lives.
After more than half a book's worth of adventures, the protagonists
- youthful ciphers whose function is limited to forwarding the plot
and acquiring the superpowers necessary to its culmination -
finally meet, having discovered that they're the good guys in a
struggle of prodigious and dystopian import. Watching everything
are observers from the Court of the Air, a cadre of executioners
dedicated to curbing powerful ambitions and government excess - or
so they claim.Almost too inventive - it's just one jaw-dropping
page after another - with hypercomplicated, barely intelligible
plotting set forth in a breathless style: Harry Potter mugs H.P.
Lovecraft, and L. Ron Hubbard explains it all. (Kirkus Reviews)
A hugely engaging adventure set in a Victorian-style world - a
fantastical version of Dickens - that will appeal to fans of
Susanna Clarke and Philip Pullman. Two orphans are more than they
seem. And one megalomaniac will stop at nothing to find them...
When Molly Templar witnesses a brutal murder at the brothel she has
just been apprenticed to, her first instinct is to return to the
poorhouse where she grew up. But there she finds her fellow orphans
butchered, and it slowly dawns on her that she was in fact the real
target of the attack. For Molly carries a secret deep in her blood,
a secret that marks her out for destruction by enemies of the
state. Soon Molly will find herself battling a grave threat to
civilization which draws on an ancient power thought to have been
quelled millennia ago. Oliver Brooks has led a sheltered life in
the home of his merchant uncle. But when he is framed for his only
relative's murder he is forced to flee for his life. He is
accompanied by Harry Stave, an agent of the Court of the Air - a
shadowy organization independent of the government that acts as the
final judiciary of the land, ensuring that order prevails. Chased
across the country, Oliver finds himself in the company of thieves,
outlaws and spies, and gradually learns more about the secret that
has blighted his life, but which may also offer him the power to
avert the coming catastrophe. Their enemies are ruthless and
myriad, but Molly and Oliver are joined by indomitable friends in
this endlessly inventive tale full of drama, intrigue and
adventure.
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