A woman with the strength to rebel.
A shapeshifter who wears the souls of the dead.
Together, they face a lethal enemy.
Em helped create it. Now she must craft its defeat.
In a city owned by industrialists, Em sells her magic to make ends meet. The extraction procedure is brutal and potentially deadly. Desperate for change, she joins an underground resistance movement to weaponize her magic and stop the abuse of workers.
Meanwhile, a mysterious voice wakes Ruk from a decades long slumber and compels him to become human. He wants to break free but is torn between his shapeshifter instincts and the needs of the soul that sustains him.
On streets haunted by outcasts and predatory automatons, a new danger emerges – an ever-growing corruption of magic and science. Em and Ruk must put aside their differences and pursue it – each for their own reasons.
What they discover will forever change their lives. Or end them...
Edited by Amanda J Spedding and Pete Kempshall
Victoriana comes to Sydney in an alternative 19th Century, bringing dark Dickensian factories and even darker souls. Mages too, practising heart magic and skin magic, along with shapeshifters, demons and automata. Mix in a mad scientist, a touch of romance and a plot to keep you guessing—wild! What's not to love? Highly recommended. ~Richard Harland
...nicely sensory, gritty, darkly colourful... an apparently real world from the first sentences, and I very soon got caught up in it... the novel's tone, characters, and themes make it apparent that Ryles takes the genre as seriously as the best steampunk writers take it... ~James P Blaylock
