The Keeper Cycle’s third quest opens with the one thing that cannot happen: in the held city of Jaipur, where a sundial the size of a palace reads the sky to the second, the shadow has begun to fall wrong. The Samrat Yantra — the Supreme Instrument, greatest of the great stone instruments of the astronomer-king Jai Singh — has no gears to jam and no hands to slip: it casts an honest shadow, and an honest shadow cannot lie. Yet it is lying — and if Makar Sankranti, the day the sun turns north and the kites go up, is read false in the held city, the year itself comes loose. And this time the six young keepers must face it stripped of everything: for in this country their gifts will not work, and six giftless harlequins — with Hina’s ledger, a flat-voiced local girl named Tara who calls herself daughter of the hands that did the sums, and nothing but their own honest shadows — must trace the error across the observatories of a vanished kingdom: to Delhi, to the zero line of Ujjain from which a whole world once measured its time, to the river of the dying at Varanasi and to Mathura, the observatory that isn’t there. Waiting at the heart of it is the Watcher — how it was made, what it kept, and whether it will consent — before the sky tilts past mending. The Orloj of Jaipur is a magical tale filled with non-stop action and thrills, as well as timeless wisdom through its unforgettable fables and poems.
“..Even older readers will find The Orloj... an imaginative rendering—one that should appeal to anyone who enjoys following a creative quest of young wannabe wizards, intertwined with core life lessons..”
Blueink Review
Erasmus Cromwell-Smith II is an American writer, playwright, and poet. The Orloj series has been crafted through a very intense and intimate introspective dive into the author's own life experiences and wisdom. The Keeper Cycle continues in Volume IX, The Orloj of Dubai; what begins in Prague spans fourteen volumes, concluding with The Orloj of Munich. The complete series is available at www.erasmuscromwellsmith.com.