Time is running out for the Clockwork River. Lower Rhumbsford is a city far removed from its glory days. Its founding fathers channelled the river Rhumb’s mighty flow into a feat that would come to power an empire. But a thousand years have passed since then, and the Rhumb has been reduced to a sluggish trickle.

The fortunes of the Locke family, descendants of the city’s most celebrated engineer, are similarly reduced. Siblings Samuel and Briony Locke must distract themselves: Sam does so with his vast lock collection; Briony with her alchemical experiments.

One night Samuel leaves the house carrying five of his most precious locks and doesn’t come back. And as Briony begins to search for her brother, she finds herself drawn into a web of ancestral secrets and imperial intrigues as a ruthless new power arises…

Epic, rollicking and in love with language, Jacob and Sara Emery’s sprawling debut novel is a rare and delicious commodity - the world’s first hydropunk novel.

Praise for A Clockwork River:

‘Delightfully weird and clever’ Grimdark Magazine

‘An uber-confident picaresque comedy in the authentic, madcap eighteenth-century manner’ The Times