Explorer Richard Burton is up against a supernatural enemy in the Philip K. Dick Award–winning steampunk series set in an alternate nineteenth century England.
Since the assassination of Queen Victoria in 1840, a cabal of prominent men—including King George V, Prince Albert, MP Benjamin Disraeli, and engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel—has steered the empire into a period of unprecedented peace and creativity with help from the spirit of a dead mystic, Abdu El Yezdi.
But on the eve of a groundbreaking alliance with the newly formed Greater German Confederation, scientists, surgeons, and engineers are being abducted—including Brunel! And when the government needs him most, Abdu El Yezdi is refusing to speak with the living.
Enter the newly-knighted explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton. Appointed the king’s agent, he must track down the missing luminaries and solve the mystery of Abdu El Yezdi’s silence. But how can the famous explorer fulfill his mission when his friends and loved ones are being picked off, one by one, by what appears to be a supernatural entity—perhaps, Abdu El Yezdi himself?
