2022 Philip K. Dick Award Special Citation, Best Novel
In this dazzling new novel evoking Westerns, surrealism, epic
fantasy, mythology, and circus extravaganzas, World Fantasy Award winner
Lavie Tidhar (Central Station) has created an incomparable dreamscape
of dark comedy, heartbreak, hope, and adventure. Chronicling a lone
man's quest in parallel worlds, The Escapement offers the archetypal
darkness of Stephen King's The Gunslinger within the dark whimsy of a
child's imagination.
"Comic, tragic, and utterly magnificent."
--Samantha Shannon, author of The Priory of the Orange Tree
"A wild, decadent hybrid of The Dark Tower and Carnivale*."
--Catherynne M. Valente, author of* Deathless
Into the reality called the Escapement rides the Stranger, a lone gunman
on a quest to rescue his son from a parallel world. But it is too easy
to get lost on a shifting landscape full of dangerous versions of his
son's most beloved things: cowboys gone lawless, giants made of stone,
downtrodden clowns, ancient battles, symbol storms, and shadowy forces
at play.
But the flower the Stranger seeks still lies beyond the Mountains of
Darkness. Time is running out, as he journeys deeper and deeper into the
secret heart of an unforeseen world.
In his most compelling work to date, Lavie Tidhar has delivered a
multicolored tapestry of dazzling imagery. The Escapement is an epic,
wildly original chronicle of the extraordinary lengths to which one will
go for love.
