The clockwork oracle 

Author : Edmund Harrowgate Pell

A MACHINE THAT HAS NEVER BEEN WRONG. A CLOCKMAKER WHO REFUSES TO BE A PROPHECY.

For one hundred and twelve years, the Oracle of Calder has foretold every storm, every shipwreck and every death in the Empire, and not one Reading has ever failed.

Then, at 4:17 on a freezing morning, a new Reading appears on every Board in the city:

“EMPEROR LEOFRIC THE FOURTH SHALL DIE BY THE HAND OF WREN CALLOWAY, CLOCKMAKER OF TINKER’S RISE, BY MEANS OF A MECHANISM OF HER OWN MAKING.”

Wren is nineteen. She mends mantel clocks. She has never met the Emperor, and she has twenty-seven days to prove the unbreakable Oracle wrong.

Hunted by the Grey Lamps, courted by the Palace and haunted by a mysterious Long Note that only she can hear, Wren is drawn into a conspiracy of silent men in grey gloves, backwards-running clocks, secret tunnels beneath the city and a drowned district where the dead father she buried is very much alive.

Beside her are a nervous young Reader with ink on his cuffs and a terrible talent for honesty, a sharp-tongued princess, a pawnbroker with a glass eye, a skyship captain with a debt to repay, and a warden who must decide whether to serve a doomed Emperor or an Oracle that may be lying.

But the truth behind Reading 40,118 is stranger than any prophecy. And on Jubilee Night, with the Throne of Hours humming and the whole Empire watching, Wren must build the one thing the Oracle never saw coming: a choice.

THE CLOCKWORK ORACLE is a 100,000-word steampunk fantasy of airships and brass, secret societies and forbidden machines, with a fierce, funny heroine, a slow-burn romance and a heart-stopping race against the clock. Perfect for readers of Mortal Engines, The Invisible Library and Howl’s Moving Castle who love fate-versus-free-will stories, inventive worlds and stories where the machines have feelings too.

Can a future be changed once it has been read?

Scroll up and click “Buy now” to find out.

📖 355 pages