*Nominated for 2022 Phillip K. Dick Award*
In this dazzling new novel evoking Westerns, surrealism, epic fantasy, mythology, and circus extravaganzas, World Fantasy Award winner Lavie Tidhar (Central Station) has created an incomparable dreamscape of dark comedy, heartbreak, hope, and adventure. Chronicling a lone man’s quest in parallel worlds, The Escapement offers the archetypal darkness of Stephen King’s The Gunslinger within the dark whimsy of a child’s imagination.
Into the reality called the Escapement rides the stranger, a lone gunman on a quest to rescue his son from a parallel world. But it is too easy to get lost on a shifting landscape full of dangerous versions of his son’s most beloved things: cowboys gone lawless, giants made of stone, downtrodden clowns, ancient battles, symbol storms and more shadowy forces at play.
But the flower the stranger seeks still lies beyond the Mountains of Darkness. Time is running out, as he journeys deeper and deeper into the secret heart of an unforeseen world.
‘A delightfully cacophonous novel, teeming with character.’ - Kirkus Reviews
‘Lavie Tidhar is a voice to be reckoned with. With The Escapement, he fearlessly crests the wave of the New-New Weird with a wild, decadent hybrid of The Dark Tower and Carnivale.’ - Catherynne M. Valente, author of Deathless
‘Dazzling…Filled with contorted fairy tales, myths, and familiar stories, Lavie Tidhar’s latest novel is both a fantastical diversion and a moving articulation of deep parental love.’ - Foreword
‘The Escapement is an original masterpiece that is all Tidhar, full of echoes of his earlier stories and novels.’ - SciFi Mind
‘For such a short read, this highly intellectual bizarro western packs one hell of a wallop…truly gorgeous detailed oddities everywhere.’ - Bradley Horner
‘If you’re a fan of bizarre fantasy world, absurdist stories or even magical realism, I think this book is perfect for you…The writing is very fluid, beautiful and fever dream-like.’ - The Ink Slinger
‘Tidhar to masterfully weave[s] all sorts of different things together that make the reader’s brain explode, or at the very least make readers shake their heads in bewilderment, but, ultimately, wonderment.’ - Mt Void
