"The delight is in what's seen en route, as Lake has configured his world-dominating empires, one British, the other Chinese, with huge and devoted attention to the last detail. The delight of the next volume--prefigured with unrelenting clarity in Escapement's final pages--should be the discovery that the destination adds up."--Washington Post Book World on EscapementRejoin the Librarian and the Chinese submarine captain, the British sailor, the clockwork man, and the young sorceress who has gone south of the great equatorial wall. This adventure in Lake’s Clockwork Earth continues the tale begun in Escapement. "The very cosmology of this world is an enigmatic astonishment, and it underpins every single bit of action and character….Lake has a ball transporting his characters up and down this magnificent world, subjecting them to all sorts of perils and escapes in a wild variety of settings. His three main protagonists all exhibit distinct and memorable personalities that allow us to filter their world through three prisms of intelligence and attitude….Fantasy has always been "escapist" in the best sense of the word, and Lake engineers a fine tale of humans in search of liberation from the clockwork and customs that ensnare them and us as well."--Sci-Fi Weekly on Escapement Read Less