Janice Shriek narrates the story of her brother, Duncan's life, his rise as an eminent historian and his long fall as his theories about the relationship between Ambergris and the city's original inhabitants the Grey Caps prove too strange and terrible and weird. It's also about Janice's life, peaking as the head of the New Art movement before dwindling to her own long ignominy, and, of course, a brief history of Ambergris in the years before during and after a terrible war, and the even more terrible things that seem to be about to happen.

A Proustian exercise in the evocation of memory and emotion through a glittering slice of social, political and cultural upheaval, this is a marvelous approach to fantasy, powerfully and compellingly and beautifully written, informed by a singular vision with deep undercurrents of horror and unease.