Coming Soon: The Book of the Alchemist

As regular readers know I like novels with a good historical setting and theme so this is a quick plug for Adam Williams’s forthcoming new doorstopper, The Book of the Alchemist, set in medieval Andalucia and civil war torn Spain (their 1930s civil war). Many of you I’m sure know Williams’s China trilogy (The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure, The Emperor’s Bones and The Dragon’s Tail). This time out he’s switched to Spain but I admit to getting a sneak preview of bits of an early draft and his widescreen rolling saga style that worked well in the China trilogy seems to suit Spain in the middle ages and 1930s well too.

The book’s available for pre-order now on Amazon and out at the end of the month. Here’s the publishers blurb to wet your apetitites:

“Eleventh-century Andaluz. While Europe slumbers in the dark ages, Southern Spain is a beacon of enlightenment that draws artists, scientists and philosophers of all faiths. In this haven of tolerance, three boys meet by chance under a fig tree on a hot summer’s day. An alchemist, a mason and a prince, they establish a secret brotherhood that will construct a great monument to astonish the world.

Andalucia, 1938. The Spanish Civil War is struggling to a close. A group of desperate Republican solders have kidnapped a former government minister and his grandson, and are holding hostages in a cathedral. They intend to sacrifice themselves and everyone else for their cause, in a final act of wanton death and destruction.

The discovery of an ancient book in a hidden space beneath the cathedral means nothing to the Republican soldiers. But to the hostages, the secrets it contains could offer their only escape.

Connecting two ideologically-torn worlds a thousand years apart, Adam Williams’s new novel is another masterful adventure and a moving portrayal of love and friendship.”