Description
Brendan Doyle is a twentieth-century English professor who travels back to 1810 London to attend a lecture given by English romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This is a London filled with deformed clowns, organised beggar societies, insane homunculi and magic.
When he is kidnapped by gypsies and consequently misses his return trip to 1983, the mild-mannered Doyle is forced to become a street-smart con man, escape artist, and swordsman in order to survive in the dark and treacherous London underworld. He defies bullets, black magic, murderous beggars, freezing waters, imprisonment in mutant-infested dungeons, poisoning, and even a plunge back to 1684.
Coleridge himself and poet Lord Byron make appearances in the novel, which also features a poor tinkerer who creates genetic monsters and a werewolf that inhabits others' bodies when his latest becomes too hairy.
A fast-paced and exciting tale of a nineteenth century London that never was by a master storyteller
About the Author
Tim Powers was born in 1952; the son of an attorney. He graduated from California State University in 1976 and since then has written more than a dozen highly acclaimed and award-winning novels, including the Fantasy Masterwork THE DRAWING OF THE DARK.
Awards
Winner of Philip K. Dick Award 1984 (UK). Short-listed for British Science Fiction Association Award for Best Novel 1986 (UK).
Book Information
ISBN 9780575077256
Author Tim Powers
Format Paperback
Page Count 464
Imprint Gollancz
Publisher Orion Publishing Co
Series Fantasy Masterworks
Weight(grams) 326g
Dimensions(mm) 135mm * 201mm * 31mm