The Clockwork Dynasty

I remember his face now so clearly, lined with wrinkles that could be scary until the old man smiled and you saw where they came from.

Do you believe in angels, June? he asked.

I don t know, I responded. No.

Perhaps you should, he said.

Grandfather cleared his throat, leaned against a creaking workbench.

I was barely a teenager, same as you, when the second world war came. My family lived in a village near the Ural Mountains. The Germans stormed onto Russian soil and it was decided I was old enough to journey to the front. All the boys in the village were sent. We were excited. Excited.

He shook his head at the memory.

Stalingrad. Winter, he said. Early in the battle. We were already starving. Frozen. The Germans had pushed a million Soviet soldiers nearly to the banks of the Volga. The women and children and wounded who were left in the city . . . they finally tried to escape across the icy black river. All hope was gone. It was only survival then.

The Volga was choked with great green military tankers, filthy fishing rigs, civilian yachts, and human beings, thousands of them, a a . . . mass of them, clinging to anything that would float. And the low gray clouds over the river were screaming with Nazi warplanes. The sky was weeping tears of fire onto the backs of those women and children. Oil and gas had spilled on the water. The river herself was burning.

I and the other scouts were on the near bank, covering the retreat. Stalingrad itself was already bombed to oblivion. You can t understand . . . it was a moonscape. Another world. A place

best moments of Dan Brown."
--Shelf Awareness

"New York Times bestselling author Daniel H. Wilson delivers a fascinating new thriller that takes us on a journey to the past discovering human-like machines that have lived among us for centuries."
--Library Journal

"Wilson has a great knack for pace and engaging action; it s a book that is very difficult to put down. It s an exceptional piece of speculative fiction, set in a world that I would very much like to visit again. Steampunk and other genre fiction fans should give it a whirl."
--The Maine Edge

"What Wilson does as well as any writer alive is create self-contained and fully realized worlds the cinematic stuff of dreams and stardust, mixed with the dirt of actual living. He does so with sensitivity, intelligence and a gift for near-baroque detail."
--Willamette Weekly

"With hints of Highlander, a touch of The Terminator, shards of Edward Scissorhands, and a dusting of Doctor Zhivago, Wilson's latest introduces an autonomous race of ancient androids not so different from ourselves. It's a thoroughly engaging read that traps you in its grinding narrative cogs and lingers long after the final page has turned."
--SyFy Wire

"In The Clockwork Dynasty, Daniel Wilson, the king of the robothriller, mixes robots, history and non-stop action to create a thoroughly original plot. Think The Terminator meets Indiana Jones with a crash course in history thrown in. A thoroughly enjoyable read."
--Phillip Margolin, New York Times bestselling author of Violent Crimes

"With The Clockwork Dynasty, Daniel H. Wilson has created a ripping, pulsing whirlwind of a world: a sweeping tale of forgotten secrets and wars, of empires and those who topple them, of identities given and taken away, of robots who seem to know better than we just what it means to be human. This is Wilson's most adventurous, romantic, utterly thrilling work, and it's not to be missed."
--Jason Gurley, author of Eleanor

"The Clockwork Dynasty is bravely imagined and satisfyingly executed. Wilson has woven a brilliant fictional world into history, making this book a great read for lovers of historical fiction as well as fantasy and sci-fi."
--Bookpage

"In the spirit of some of my personal favorites (He, She, and It and The Golem and the Jinni), The Clockwork Dynasty imagines a world where 'artificial intelligence' is something altogether different, and where the meaning of 'human' has become more than flesh and bone."
--Veronica Belmont, host of The Sword and Laser

"Action-packed and uniquely imagined with robots--and history!--like you've never seen before, The Clockwork Dynasty is a thrilling ride from start to finish."
--John Joseph Adams, series editor of Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy