“The debut of a major talent. Kage Baker is a fresh, audacious, ambitious new voice, wry, jazzy, irreverent, sharp as a razor, full of daring, dash, and elan, sometimes surprisingly lyrical. She is also one hell of a storyteller. If you’re reading something by Kage Baker, fasten your seat belt—you’re in for a wild ride.”
—Gardner Dozois, editor of The Years’s Best Science Fiction
“An ingenious gambit to encompass Bloody Mary in 350 pages, plus a great love story and a satire on manor life, all topped off by an auto da fe. A savory if there ever was one…The period detail is delicious. What a treat. A beautiful writer.”
—Cecelia Holland, author of Jerusalem
“A narrative that sparkles with wit… A highly impressive and thoroughly engrossing debut.”
“Baker’s witty debut novel is a pip.”
“And now the news. And it’s grim, we regret to say: today England’s first officialvictim of the Counter-Reformation was burnt at Smithfield. John Rogers, Canonof Saint Paul’s, longtime Reformation agitator and translator of the MatthewBible, died in the presence of his wife and children in a ceremony lasting twenty-five minutes. Your news team had an operative on the scene and, Diotima, canyou tell us about it?”
