Clockwork River
A brother and sister must untangle a web of ancestral secrets and imperial intrigues to save their city in this steampunk fantasy epic.
May we present the world's first hydro-punk novel: a rollicking fantasy epic full of humble kitchen magic and awe-inspiring civil engineering.
The story you are about to read takes place in a city you have probably never heard of.
Lower Rhumbsford was built a very long time ago, on the banks of a great river, by very clever people who equipped it with artificial waterways and tunnels through the bedrock to carry water, lamp-gas and other useful things. The river's mighty flow, channelled into a thousand flumes and sluices, made the city the seat of an empire.
But a thousand years later have passed since then, and something is wrong. The pipes are leaking, the current is sluggish, and the river is about to freeze over for the first time in memory.
In a once fashionable quarter of the city, in the once grand ancestral home of a family once wealthy and well-known, live the last descendants of the city's great founder, siblings Samuel and Briony Locke.
But when one night, Samuel leaves the house carrying five of the most precious locks in his vast collection and doesn't return, the whole family will be drawn into a web of ancestral secrets and imperial intrigues. If Sam and Briony are to find each other, they will need the help of a tight-lipped house spirit, a convict gang, a club of antiques enthusiasts, a tribe of troglodytes, the Ladies Whist Club and a lovesick mouse.
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J. S. Emery
J.S. Emery is a brother-sister writing team, born in North Idaho into a homeschooling family of seven children, each of whom received an air rifle and a copy of The Odyssey by way of a fifth birthday present. This background prepared them wonderfully for writing fantasy novels but very poorly for formal education. After dropping out of secondary school, they worked jobs including ballet dancer, emergency room janitor, and map librarian in various parts of Europe and North America. They now live in the United States, where they are godparents (and, increasingly, dungeon masters) to one another's children.