Steampunk, a shapeshifting and unpredictable genre, has a way of subverting the past, mischievously disordering the universe with historical what-ifs. It’s a field not normally rewarded with prizes and critical hallelujahs. Natasha Pulley’s first novel, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, proved an exception. In a gaslit London menaced by Fenian terrorism, Nathaniel, a wide-eyed innocent, met and fell for a Japanese watchmaker, Mori, who could remember the future. It hit thejackpot.
Five years on, the inscrutable clairvoyant and the Home Office telegraph clerk-turned-translator are back. Intricate as an origami sculpture, sometimes too convoluted for its own good, The Lost Future of Pepperharrow is standalone, but new readers would do well to prepare themselves with The Watchmaker.
This sequel opens in 1888, with our Watson and Holmes odd couple whisked out of fog-ridden London, and Thaniel posted to Tokyo, where terrified British legation staff have reported sightings of ghosts.
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