The
Emperor of All Things by Paul Witcover is due next
week from Bantam (£16.99):
“1758. England is embroiled in a
globe-spanning conflict that stretches from her North American colonies to
Europe and beyond. Across the Channel, the French prepare for an invasion – an invasion
rumoured to be led by none other than Bonnie Prince Charlie. It seems the map
of Europe is about to be redrawn. Yet behind these dramatic scenes, another war
is raging – a war that will determine not just the fate of nations but of
humanity itself...
Daniel Quare is a journeyman in an ancient
guild, The Worshipful Company of Clockmakers. He is also a Regulator, part of
an elite network within the guild devoted to searching out and claiming for
England's exclusive use any horological innovation that could give them an
upperhand, whether in business or in war.
Just such a mission has brought Quare to
the London townhouse of eccentric collector, Lord Wichcote. He seeks a pocket
watch rumoured to possess seemingly impossible properties that are more to do
with magic than with any science familiar to Quare or to his superiors. And the
strange timepiece has attracted the attention of others as well: the mysterious
masked thief known only as Grimalkin, and a deadly French spy who stop at
nothing to bring the prize back to his masters. Soon Quare finds himself on a
dangerous trail of intrigue and murder that leads far from the world he knows
into an otherwhere of dragons and demigods, in which nothing is as it seems ...
time least of all.”
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