Pell is an engineer and digger by trade-unearthing and repairing the fascinating artifacts left behind by the mysterious Ancients who once inhabited the sunbaked planet of Tampere. She'll do anything to help the people of her village survive and to better understand the secrets of what came before.
Heartwood and Moseus are keepers of a forbidding tower near the village of Emgarden. Inside are the remnants of complex machines the likes of which Pell has never seen. Considering her affinity for Ancient tech, the keepers know Pell is their only hope of putting the pieces of these metal puzzles together and getting them running. The tower's other riddle is Heartwood himself. He is an enigma, distant yet protective, to whom Pell is inexplicably drawn.
Pell's restoration of this broken behemoth soon brings disturbing visions-and the discovery that her relationship to it could finally reveal the origins of the tower's strange keepers and the unfathomable reason the truth has been hidden from her.
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Something is missing. (CHAPTER 1)
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(47North, 1 July 2024, e-book, 299 pages, bought from @AmazonKindle via Amazon First Reads)
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I'm a fan of the author and really enjoyed Still the Sun. This is a complex read, a fantasy novel with overtones of ancient history. It's a quiet, intense novel with a small cast of characters. Much of the events revolve around Pell, Heartwood and Moseus who spend a lot of time together as Pell tries to put the machines together and find out ancient secrets and knowledge. Why does Pell have such affinity for these machines? Who are Heartwood and Moseus really and what their motivation? This is a gripping read. I'd recommend it.
