First published 2011
London swelters under fierce summer heat as the Industrial Revolution roars ahead powered by steam cybernetic Engines. Charles Babbage has perfected his Analytical Engine, bringing the computer age to 1855. The ruling class flees the polluted city, leaving anarchy in their wake. Edward "Leviathan" Mallory, explorer and paleontologist, possesses a mysterious set of perforated Engine cards that once belonged to an executed Luddite leader's daughter and later passed through Ada Byron, the "Queen of Engines" and daughter of Prime Minister Lord Byron. Mallory knows the cards form a gambling device readable by specialized Engines, but the technology-hating Luddites want them back. They threaten and libel Mallory as the subversive movement battles the intellectual elite. The conflict builds toward a violent confrontation over the punched cards that someone will kill to obtain. In this alternate 1885, Great Britain wields advanced computational technology to reshape the world, but the struggle between progress and tradition turns deadly.
Genres: science-fiction, 19th-century, steampunk, alternate-history
Vibes: suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: alternate-history, found-family
Setting: London, Great Britain
Period: 1855
492 pages · Paperback · Spectra/Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group