Luminous Chaos by Jean-Christophe Valtat

“Parisian literature of the byways has its own methods, and its purveyors are shrewd enough to know what will be tolerated and what enjoyed by their peculiar class of patrons; transcendental toxicology and an industry in idols worked by criminals intercommunicating by means of Volapük may be left to them.” —A. E. Waite, Devil Worship in France, 1896 “Of Paris, what am I to say? All of it was of course a delirium, a tomfoolery.” —Fyodor Dostoyevski, The Gambler, 1865

Luminous Chaos by Jean-Christophe Valtat

Published on Feb 10, 2014

Melville House

About

It’s 1907 in the icily beautiful New Venice, and the hero of the city’s liberation, Brentford Orsini, has been deposed by his arch-rival — who immediately assigns Brentford and his friends on a dangerous diplomatic mission to Paris. So, Brentford recruits his old friend and louche counterpart, Gabriel d’Allier, underground chanteuse and suffragette Lillian Lake, and the mysterious Blankbate–former Foreign Legionnaire and leader of the Scavengers, the city’s garbage collecting cult–and others, for the mission. But their mode of transportation–the untested “transaerian psychomotive”–proves faulty and they find themselves transported back in time to Paris 1895 … before New Venice even existed. What’s more, it’s a Paris experiencing an unprecedented and crushingly harsh winter.

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