Book 1 of The Productions of Time
Tempus Rerum Imperator: Time, Emperor of All Things.
The year is 1758. England is at war, embroiled in a globe-spanning conflict that stretches from her North American colonies to Europe and beyond. And now, after more than two years of military and diplomatic setbacks, the country itself is at risk. Across the Channel, the French prepare for an invasion-an invasion rumored to be led by none other than Bonnie Prince Charlie. It seems the map of Europe is about to be redrawn... again. Yet beneath the surface, behind the scenes, another war is raging. A war that will determine not just the fate of nations but of humanity itself.
Daniel Quare is a journeyman in the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers, an ancient guild whose royal charter confers absolute authority over the manufacture of timepieces. But Quare is more than he seems. He is a Regulator, a member of an elite spy network within the guild-a network devoted to searching out and claiming for England's exclusive use any horological innovation that could conceivably result in an advantage for Britain over her adversaries, whether in business or in war. It is just such a mission that brings him one moonlit night to the London townhouse of the eccentric collector Lord Wichcote. But there he finds more than he bargained for. A pocket watch possessed of seemingly impossible properties-deadly properties that seem to have more to do with magic than with any science familiar to Quare or to his superiors in the guild, Sir Thaddeus Wolfe, Grandmaster of the Order, and Theophilus Magnus, head of the Most Secret and Exalted Order of Regulators. But the strange watch has drawn the attention of others as well. The mysterious masked thief known only as Grimalkin, and a French spy-and cold-blooded killer-who seeks to bring the prize back to his masters.
Soon Quare finds himself following a trail of intrigue and murder that leads far from the world he knows into an otherwhere of dragons and demigods, in which nothing is as it seems... time least of all.
"When a publisher bandies about ingredients such as Philip Pullman, Susanna Clarke, Neal Stephenson and Justin Cronin, the book in question had better be one fancy dish of haute cuisine. Fortunately, Paul Witcover's The Emperor of All Things just about delivers on [those] claims. It's a novel of big ideas corralled by Witcover into a hugely entertaining read."
-The Independent
"Witcover's prose is playful yet persuasive...unrestrained by the conventions of any one genre...segueing seamlessly from wonder, whimsy and conspiracy to intrigue, espionage and action...thrilling."
-TOR.COM
"An excitingly and brilliantly realised, poetically written tale of magic, subterfuge and intrigue. Not to mention clocks."
-SFFWORLD
"Witcover conjuers an enlightenment-punk vision of England, before taking detours to the Alps, subterranean London and the utterly fantastic. 4-stars"
-SFX
"A hugely entertaining read...comparisons to Neil Stephenson and Susanna Clarke are only very slightly premature. As with the finest timepiece, The Emperor of All Things is ultimately a rather beautiful thing."
-Independent on Sunday
"Vividly evokes an authentically dangerous, dirty and smelly 18th century London Henry Fielding would recognize... a real page-turner which had me gripped"
-HISTORICAL NOVELS REVIEW
