eBook edition.
The Keeper Cycle’s second quest begins with a single golden feather, fallen out of a clear summer sky onto the Bund — dropped by the Golden Rooster, eldest of the Orloj’s three sons, keeping a promise nine hundred years old. It summons the six young keepers, with Hina Tanaka and her ledger, to the one city of the quest that will not hold still — Shanghai, where a squat stone tower called Big Ching chimed Westminster over the river, and where, behind the real city, a held city is waiting for the greatest clock ever lost. Nine hundred years ago, Su Song built a tower forty feet high, driven by nothing but falling water, that told the hour, tracked the stars, and struck its bells with little wooden men — and he wrote a book so the knowledge could never be lost. The tower fell anyway. The book survived — as a fragment, nineteen leaves of forty-seven, stopping exactly where the heart begins. Now the six must recover the missing pages, master the lessons of the west and north, and raise the half-built tower — beam by beam, its mended joints seamed in gold — until a small brass heart that has refused to beat for nine centuries consents, at last, to hold the wheel and let it go, on the beat. The Orloj of Shanghai 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 VIII, The Orloj of Jaipur; what begins in Prague spans fourteen volumes, concluding with The Orloj of Munich. The complete series is available at www.erasmuscromwellsmith.com.