Series: Book 2 in the Baroque Cycle (3 Volume) series
Rating: ****
Tags: Fiction, General, Historical, Lang:en
Summary
In the year 1689, a cabal of Barbary galley slaves --
including one Jack Shaftoe, a.k.a. King of the Vagabonds,
a.k.a. Half-Cocked Jack, lately and miraculously cured of the
pox -- devises a daring plan to win freedom and fortune. A
great adventure ensues, rife with battles, chases,
hairbreadth escapes, swashbuckling, bloodletting, and danger
-- a perilous race for an enormous prize of silver ... nay,
gold ... nay, legendary gold that will place the intrepid
band at odds with the mighty and the mad, with alchemists,
Jesuits, great navies, pirate queens, and vengeful despots
across vast oceans and around the globe. Meanwhile, back in Europe ... The exquisite and resourceful Eliza, Countess de la Zeur,
master of markets, pawn and confidante of enemy kings,
onetime Turkish harem virgin, is stripped of her immense
personal fortune by France's most dashing privateer.
Penniless and at risk from those who desire either her or her
head (or both), she is caught up in a web of international
intrigue, even as she desperately seeks the return of her
most precious possession -- her child. While ... Newton and Leibniz continue to propound their grand
theories as their infamous rivalry intensifies, stubborn
alchemy does battle with the natural sciences, nobles are
beheaded, dastardly plots are set in motion, coins are newly
minted (or not) in enemy strongholds, father and sons reunite
in faraway lands, priests rise from the dead ... and Daniel
Waterhouse seeks passage to the Massachusetts colony in hopes
of escaping the madness into which his world has
descended. **