Jack Cloudie
A Novel
-
-
4.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
Jack Cloudie is a tale of high adventure and derring-do set in the same Victorian-style steampunk world as Stephen Hunt's acclaimed The Court of the Air and The Secrets of the Fire Sea.
Thanks to his father's gambling debts, young Jack Keats finds himself on the streets and trying to survive as a pickpocket. Following a daring bank robbery gone badly awry, Jack narrowly escapes the scaffold, only to be pressed into the Royal Aerostatical Navy. Assigned to the most useless airship in the fleet, serving under a captain who is most probably mad, Jack seems to be bound for almost certain death in the faraway deserts of Cassarabia.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, the slave Omar ibn Barir finds his life turned upside down when his master's religious sect is banned. Unexpectedly freed, he joins the Caliph's military forces—just as war is brewing.
Two very similar young men prepare to face each other across a field of battle. But is Omar the enemy, or is Jack's true nemesis the sickness at the heart of the Caliph's court?
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the swashbuckling fifth steampunk-inspired fantasy in Hunt's Jackelian series (after Secrets of the Fire Sea), Jack Keats is caught red-handed trying to break into Lords Bank. He faces death at the hands of the Jackelian middle-court until he is saved by the might of the Royal Aerostatical Navy which just means he'll be cannon fodder in the ongoing war against the Cassarabian infidels. Jack becomes a transaction engine operator on the Iron Partridge, the RAN's ramshackle, unloved prototype aerostat. Getting the ship to fly is the first order of business for a crew made up of misfits, convicts, and drunkards, and their mission, to penetrate hostile territory to spy on the Cassarabians new airships, is so risky as to be suicidal. Hunt combines elements of fantasy, genetic manipulation, and a large dash of Patrick O'Brien to form a wonderfully satisfying tale of adventure.
