Gargoyles & Absinthe

Paris, 1887

Fifty-five years after the Second Republic arose from rebellion, France is a technological juggernaut and envy of the civilized world. Airships ply the skies, steam wagons crowd the streets, and automaton soldiers guard palaces and factories. Darkness and soot choke a city where innocent blood flows freer than wine at stately banquets.

Nanette Lamaine lives underground in Paris’s catacombs with her overprotective but brilliant magician father Hercule and their pet gargoyle Gaston. By day she tinkers on inventions in her laboratory while nights are spent keeping Gaston out of trouble.

When magic is outlawed and government agents murder her father, Nanette seeks out Paris’s greatest sorceress–the mysterious Madame Astrid–who schools her in the thaumaturgical fighting arts, an elegant combination of physical agility and elemental magic.

Nanette and Gaston reluctantly join the Flywheel Fellowship, a ragtag band of misfits determined to topple the sadistic Admiral Aguillon. But revolutions don’t always run smoothly, and Nanette finds herself with France’s most incompetent rebels; an idealistic but cowardly poet, a sarcastic clockwork thief, and an anarchist who’d rather bake soufflés than fight.

As Nanette comes to grips with her role as a leader, she realizes the past affects her actions and that she must fight for respect. In a city where magicians are scared and gargoyles sentient, Nanette risks everything to unravel a conspiracy that could shake the Second Republic to its core, or destroy what remaining family she has left.