The Rise of the Iron Moon — Stephen Hunt

From the author of The Court of the Air and The Kingdom Beyond the Waves comes a thrilling new adventure set in the same Victorian-style world. Perfect for fans of Philip Pullman and Susanna Clarke.

Born into captivity as a product of the Royal Breeding House, friendless orphan Purity Drake suddenly finds herself on the run with a foreign vagrant from the North after accidentally killing one of her guards.

Her strange rescuer claims he is on the run himself from terrible forces who mean to enslave the Kingdom of Jackals as they conquered his own nation. Purity doubts his story, until reports begin to filter through from Jackals' neighbours of the terrible Army of Shadows, marching across the continent and sweepign all before them.

But there's more to Purity than meets the eye. As Jackals girds itself for war against and army of near-unkillable beasts serving an ancient evil with a terrible secret, it soon becomes clear that their only hope is a strange little royalist girl and the last, desperate plan of an escaped slave.

Reviews

Praise for ‘The Court of the Air':

‘An inventive, ambitious work, full of wonders and marvels' Lisa Tuttle, The Times

‘The characters are convincing and colourful, but the real achievement is the setting, a hellish take on Victorian London … the depth and complexity of Hunt's vision makes it compulsive reading for all ages' Guardian

‘Wonderfully assured … Hunt knows what his audience like and gives it to them with a sardonic wit and carefully developed tension' Time Out

‘Rich and colourful … keeps you engrossed … a confident, audacious novel' SFX

‘Like a magpie, Stephen Hunt has plucked colourful events from history and politics and used them for inspiration … Hunts tells his full-blooded tale with lip-smacking relish, revealing a vivid, often gruesome imagination … The Court of the Air brims with originality and, from the first, its chase-filled plot never lets up' Starburst

About the author

Stephen Hunt is the author of the highly acclaimed ‘The Court of the Air'. He set up one of the first science fiction and fantasy websites, www.SFcrowsnest.com, in 1994. Today the site has 700,000 readers a month. Stephen Hunt lives with his wife and children in Surrey.