Winner of the Philip K. Dick Memorial Award

In 1870s London, a city of contradictions and improbabilities, where living men are willing to risk all to steal a carp. Here, a night of bangers and ale at the local pub can result in an eternity at the Blood Pudding with the rest of the reanimated dead.

A dead man has been piloting a mysterious decaying airship across the foggy skies of the city for some years, arousing the interest of many: the Royal Society, a fraudulent evangelist named Shiloh, the vivisectionist Dr. Ignacio Narbondo and of course the scientist and explorer Professor Langdon St. Ives.

St. Ives and his friends of the Trismegistus Club are more concerned with the inheritance of Jack Owlesby, a fine young fellow affianced to Dorothy, the beautiful daughter of toymaker/inventor William Keeble, who builds jolly boxes for space aliens, oxygenators, and gigantic emeralds. Jack's late father bequeathed him just such a gem, but also left behind dark knowledge related to the evil Narbondo. St. Ives suspects that Narbondo and his assistant, are using this knowledge to raise the dead, possibly for nefarious purposes. When poor Bill Kraken steals what everyone assumes to be Owlesby's emerald in a fit of alien-induced madness, ambitions, greed and heroism collide turning Hampstead Heath into a carnival of flying skulls, crumbling ghouls and crashing spaceships.

This rip-roaring, highly entertaining steam punk classic is the second book in the Narbondo series, written by Blaylock, one of the literary pioneers of the Steampunk movement. Set in the same world, the series need not be read in order.