The Bedlam Stacks

Starred review from July 3, 2017
On account of a leg injury, botanical expert Merrick Tremayne, the hero of this witty, entrancing novel set in the 19th century from Pulley (The Watchmaker of Filigree Street), initially declines to travel from England to Peru for the East India Company. Because Merrick insists that a heavy statue overlooking his father’s grave has mysteriously moved, Merrick’s half-brother, Charles, worries that he’s afflicted with the mental illness that landed their mother in an asylum. To avoid either of the unpleasant choices that Charles offers out of fear for Merrick’s sanity (taking work at a parsonage where he’d no longer see the statue, or being confined with their mother), Merrick joins the treacherous expedition, whose ostensible purpose is to retrieve cuttings from the rare trees that are the only source for quinine, needed to alleviate a malaria epidemic in India that has adversely affected the company’s business. On arrival in Peru, Merrick encounters more oddities, including animated statues that give benedictions and a border made of salt and bone that is fatal to cross, which cause him to feel that he has entered “an imaginary place where the river was a dragon and somewhere in the forest was something stranger than elves.” His quest to both stay alive and to obtain the precious cinchona plants leads to more marvels—and to tragedy. Pulley makes the fantastic feel plausible and burnishes her reputation as a gifted storyteller. Agent: Jenny Savill, Andrew Nurnberg Associates (U.K.).

June 15, 2017

Merrick thought his adventuring days were finished after an injury forced him to resign from the East India Company and retire to his brother's estate. In 1859, a desperate need for cinchona trees, a rich source of quinine and part of Merrick's family history in Peru, requires him to travel there to smuggle cuttings past a Peruvian government blockade. He and an old companion head for the New Bethlehem settlement where Merrick's father and grandfather once lived but find more than they bargained for. VERDICT Fans of The Watchmaker of Filigree Street (who will be pleased that a character from that novel makes a cameo appearance) know that Pulley has a way with damaged characters who are looking for a new purpose in life. While there are steampunk elements, including clockwork lamps, there's also a subtle inexplicable magic running throughout the unusual, remote setting. [See Prepub Alert, 2/27/17.]--MM

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2017

In this follow-up to Pulley's extravagantly praised debut novel, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, former East India Company smuggler Merrick Tremayne is so desperate to escape Cornwall, where he's stuck after a terrible accident that has left him lame, that he gladly accepts an India Office offer to secure quinine in Peru. Every expeditionary who's tried has died, killed by something beyond the salt line separating the village where Merrick lands from the looming forest. Fantastical stories abound, and the young missionary priest Merrick befriends seems rather improbably to have known his grandfather. Big promotion.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 1, 2017
Pulley's (The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, 2015) second novel demonstrates that the imagination she showed in her impressive debut was no fluke.The story opens in 1859, with the narrator, Merrick Tremayne, morosely nursing an injured leg at his decrepit family estate in Cornwall. Merrick used to smuggle opium into Hong Kong for the East India Company until an explosion a few years ago cost him his health and job. Botany and exotic travel run in the family: his grandfather and father both spent years in Peru, combing the Andes for botanical valuables such as orchids and frost-resistant coffee. Now the company wants to send Merrick to his ancestors' old stomping grounds, hiring him to break the Peruvian quinine monopoly by smuggling out cuttings from cinchona trees, the source of the antimalarial medicine. Is Merrick well enough to hike the Andes? Pulley understands her genre--swashbuckling costume fantasy--but she deals in surprises, not cliches. An exploding tree, a mysterious moving statue, and a visit from an old friend help make up Merrick's mind, propelling him across the ocean to a strange world of thin air, volcanic glass, and floating cities, where descendants of the Incas keep magical secrets. Strictly speaking, this is a prequel--a few paragraphs and a character or two tie this novel to Pulley's masterful debut--but the two books have very different atmospheres. Where Pulley's first novel sparkled with the ingenuity of spinning gears, her second offers a slower, sadder meditation on love, trust, and the passage of time.

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