eBook edition.
A new cycle of the quest begins. A letter folded seventeen times calls the six young wizards to Tokyo — to a city that once kept hours no clock in Europe could hold: unequal hours, hours that stretch in summer and shrink in winter, hours that belong to the sun and not to the machine. At the heart of the mystery stands the most extraordinary timepiece the six have ever faced: the Man-nen dokei, the Myriad Year Clock — the ten-thousand-year clock, the most Japanese machine ever built, with a foreign heart at its center — and its six faces, each of which will ask the harlequins for something different, and one of which is broken. Guided by a girl named Hina Tanaka, keeper of a ledger older than her family’s name, they must earn the windings of the great clock face by face — the Western hours, the Moon, the Zodiac, the Twenty-Four Seasons, the Weekday — and recover, from under six hundred years of gold, the name the histories should have kept and did not: the story of the clockmaker born a slave. For past the six faces, the spring itself keeps a seventh test — and what it unlocks will change the quest forever. The Orloj of Tokyo is a magical tale filled with non-stop action and thrills, as well as timeless wisdom through its unforgettable fables and poems — the first book of the Keeper Cycle.
“..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 VII, The Orloj of Shanghai; what begins in Prague spans fourteen volumes, concluding with The Orloj of Munich. The complete series is available at www.erasmuscromwellsmith.com.