The best character in this story full of amazing characters, is Rafael, a Peruvian Catholic priest. He is also the preserver of Andean spiritual traditions and cares for the markayuq: wooden statues which are considered to be actual people turned to stone, can move around in mysterious ways, and are guardians of sacred spaces.

If that sounds a bit much, that is because it is. In the end it did not surprise me, but did disappoint me, when we have a “giant eagle” style save by a Inca community floating in the clouds. First of all, I'd like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. The past ahead. Time is like a river and you float with the current. Your ancestors set off before you did, so they're far ahead. Your descendants will sail it after.”

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Spoiler Warning: This article or section may contain spoilers. If this bothers you, proceed with caution. Definitely recommended for anyone to whom a queer platonic historical fantasy set in Peru sounds interesting. :) I will likely read this and Watchmaker again before Pulley's next book comes out. My edition to the HMC au that I would like very much to write more for. Language: English Words: 2,502 Chapters: 1/1 Comments: 4 Kudos: 5 Bookmarks: 1 Hits: 50

The cover alone made me desperate to get hold of this book, not to mention the description. Exploding trees? Strange events in Peru? Sign me up now, please! If you need an example of the cruelty of man and empire you have to look no farther than the slaughter and slavery of the Congo rubber trade. It's hard to root for a guy who is super chill about the Congo. And for a book which tosses that in there as an aside. More 'blink and you miss it' but with massacres. The eagerly anticipated new novel from the author of The Watchmaker of Filigree Street - a treacherous quest in the magical landscape of nineteenth-century Peru. That however is not my real problem with the ending. My disappointment is more with the relationship status at the end, but the identities of the characters in fact might not leave any possible non-problematic relationship options, I'll discuss that more in the spoiler tags below though. Hart called this a queerplatonic romance, which fits well, but I would have liked something more solid at the end, be it sexual or not.The world he travelled through was so well realised, and the Peruvian jungle and the town of Bedlam felt wonderfully real and alive. The imaginative elements worked well because they came out of the natural world and old traditions, and they spoke of what makes up human. I particularly liked that way that those things sat against practical concerns, particularly the importance of a good cup of coffee. He understood well what grief meant to a markayuq. In the same way that they learnt languages, gathering knowledge carved into stone at the first mention and never forgetting, never lessening, they held sadness just as permanently. Language: English Words: 4,177 Chapters: 1/1 Comments: 4 Kudos: 8 Bookmarks: 1 Hits: 74 I must say that in terms of imaginative concepts and world building I thoroughly did like this book, if a bit overcrowded at times. I’m so glad that I did. It was a lovely mixture of the familiar from the first book and the completely different and utterly right for this book; and it was set in the same slightly fanciful but utterly natural past that I wished could have been but that I know probably wasn’t. As a reader, it felt like Pulley’s research into Peru - not just the country and the layout/scenery, but also the history and language - was very extensive and it really showed throughout her writing.

The Marqayuk' was whispered by the gardeners whenever the fog passed in the distance as they worked in the greenhouses. Tools of the enemy state. I was drawn into this story from the very beginning – I loved the way that the fictional Tremaynes were insinuated into the family history of the real Tremayne family that used to live at Heligan – but even if I hadn’t known that very real place, where the lost gardens are open to visitors, I still would have been captivated.This book is a historical yet spellbinding journey about a group of smugglers sent on a journey to obtain the purest form of malaria antidote-medicine from the 18th century Peruvian quinine trees found deep within the mountains. If you read The Watchmaker of Filigree Street then you may already know this, but first time readers need to understand going into this book: it requires some patience. I wouldn't describe it as slow because changing the pace would be changing the feeling of the book itself, I would much rather describe it as peaceful and lovingly written. The relationships in the book are very...unsatisfying. Nothing comes of much of them, or they're handled almost superficially. I'm all for slow burns but not if they fizzle into nothing, not if you build up a sort of almost super-human devotion and allow it to go absolutely nowhere. I was too caught up in the wonder of what I was reading to ponder the serious questions, but I saw that they were there and they gave the story weight without ever weighing it down.

At the heart of this is colonialism, with all its horrors. This is the summation of colonialism in the novel: But you are supposed to root for him, I think, he is so damned affable (a flaw - if he'd been less affable at key moments the book would have been more interesting!) and yet at one late point he agrees to go off to the Congo rubber plantations should he survive Peru, and, well. The history of quinine and the East India Company was fascinating, as were the stone statues which moved. A hint here - do not read this book if you dislike magical realism. There is a whole lot of fantastical stuff going on which you may not be able to swallow if you like your fiction real. I nodded. He could have. But it felt good to have stood in front of him without flinching and, however stupid it was, I wanted to do it again. I was smitten when I read Natasha Pulley’s first book, ‘The Watchmaker of Filigree Street’ a year or two ago, and so when I saw that a second book was being sent out into the world I knew that I had to rush out and buy a copy.

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I can’t really review this book without keeping the The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, Natasha Pulley’s debut, in mind and I apologies in advance for multiple comparisons between both books which I will be making. At this point I should explain that this isn’t a sequel or part of a series, that there is a character who appears in both books, but that this is a different story set at a different time in that same world. There is a certain serene nonsensicalness to this. It has an edge of surrealism and fantasy added to a historical novel and a travelogue. In addition there is an element of steampunk as well. It is mainly set in Peru in and around the 1860s. It revolves around quinine and the attempts to steal some to be grown in other parts of the world. This is also an excuse for introducing plenty of references to Incan culture and mythology. So there are statures that move, pollen that does odd things, cloud cities, obsidian and much more.