About this item
When streetwise Molly Templar witnesses a brutal murder at the brothel she has recently been apprenticed to, her first instinct is to run back to the poorhouse where she grew up. But there she finds her fellow orphans butchered, and it slowly dawns on her that she was the real target of the attack. For Molly is a special little girl, and she carries a secret that marks her out for destruction by enemies of the state.Oliver Brooks has led a sheltered existence in the backwater home of his merchant uncle. But when he is framed for his only relative's murder he is forced to flee for his life, accompanied by an agent of the mysterious Court of the Air. Chased across the country, Oliver finds himself in the company of thieves, outlaws and spies, and gradually learns more about the secret that has blighted his life. Soon Molly and Oliver will find themselves battling a grave threat to civilization, an ancient power thought to have been quelled millennia ago. Their enemies are ruthless and myriad, but the two orphans are also aided by indomitable friends in this endlessly inventive tale full of drama, intrigue, and adventure. The Court of the Air is a rollicking adventure set in a fantastical Dickensian clockwork universe that will appeal to fans of Susanna Clarke and Philip Pullman.
About the Author
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Stephen Hunt is a fantasy, science fiction, crime and thriller author who lives in Spain and the UK. His current fantasy works are within the 'Far-called' series, published by Gollancz (the genre imprint of Orion/Hachette) . . . with adventures set on Pellas, a massive and fascinating planet where radio signals take centuries to be passed along a chain of guild stations, and merchant caravans can travel for millennia without retracing their steps.
The first two exciting novels in this series are 'In Dark Service' and 'Foul Tides Turning', and focus on the Carnehan family, whose lives are torn apart in a terrible slave raid on the town of Northhaven.
Hunt is arguably best known for his Jackelian series of novels from HarperCollins, also the publisher of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis in the UK, the success of the first of which, 'The Court of the Air', gave rise to a genre called steampunk.
The Jackelian world is a fantasy adventure set in a far-future Earth where the passage of time has erased almost all memory of our current world from history. Electricity is now unreliable and classed as a dark power, with many of the nations of the world existing at a Victorian level of development and relying on steam-power, mechanical nanotechnology and biotechnology to survive and prosper.
It is an age of strange creatures, flashing blades, steammen servants, airship battles and high adventure.
Each novel is written as a stand-alone work, but share the same world and many of the same characters who criss-cross between the novels (a technique shared with fellow British fantasy author Terry Pratchett and his Discworld series) .
Foreign language and international editions of the six novels of the Jackelian series have been sold to Tor Books (USA) , Albin Michel (France) , Verlagsgruppe Random House (Germany) , Enterbrain Manga and Anime (Japan) , Edições Saída de Emergência (Portugal) , Paidós (Spain) , AST (Russia) , and the Anhui Literature and Art Publishing House (China) .
Stephen maintains his own web site over at www.StephenHunt.net and when he is not writing, he can be found indulging in such interests as cooking, gardening, collecting comic-books, and building his collections of genre novels.
He still sometimes writes for the magazine he helped to found, www.SFcrowsnest.org.uk, the first science fiction web site.
