As a follow up to yesterday's, well received, but fairly snarked at post, I'll share the cover of the first of Hugh Cook's *Chronicles of an Age of Darkness* to be really science fiction, *The Wishtone and the Wonderworkers*. It is my fond hope that comedians will show restraint\*, and appreciate the fearsome Reptoctocatapuss, loving rendered by Mr Crisp, as it strives to help pedestrians cross a rope bridge bridge against a sky of rhubarb, custard and insanity.

This novel is sent on the island on Untunchilamon, specifically in the city of Injiltaprajura, and follows rock gardener Chegory Guy, as he tries to survive a sequence of alarums in a state that had just recently operated pogroms against his people...

The setting is interesting as it becomes clear how much the people of Olo Malan(or Skrin as the natives referred to it) had lost, as the undercity, known as locally 'Downstairs' is a treasure store of technological marvels, it's wealth only exceeded by it's danger.

This book deals extensively with prejudice, racism , drug and alcohol abuse and also takes much more care with death than some of it's contemporaries. 

Returning to Earth, with a little history this volume was published in 1990 the same year as Bruce Sterling's *The Difference Engine.* With both Sterling and Cook contemplating the completion of Difference Engine No.2 at London's Science Museum. Two of the characters are a homages to Charles Babbage(Ivan Pokrov) and Ada Lovelace(Artemis Ingalawa), and the novel features a mechanical analytical engine that he maintains and she runs math problems on it, mostly for Injiltaprajura's Inland Revenue department.

This sixth volume of the *Chronicles of an Age of Darkness* was the first to not be available in UK libraries or WH Smith which was quite a shame, and, that I had to embark on a great quest of discovery to find an independent bookstore, if I was to be able to enjoy some Hugh Cook...

Happy to take any feedback you might have on the cover, or it would be even better if people could share their tales or reading this book?

\* >!If not just feel free to make Octopussy jokes, you 'orrible lot, though the monster was really a!<>! Kraken - so this scene did actually happen in the book, just with a slightly different monster...!<



Cover of Hugh Cook's The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers, art By Steve Crisp