Return to the crossroads town of Arcane in this standalone adventure in the world of The Boneshaker and Bluecrowne.
When two brothers walk into town bearing the corpse of a man who disappeared half a century before, it’s not long before Natalie Minks finds herself entangled in the task that brought the boys to the crossroads town of Arcane with their grisly burden–an undertaking that somehow involves the mysterious Simon Coffrett. Meanwhile, a vicious peddler named Trigemine waits with terrible and deadly penalties at the ready, should Natalie and her new friends fail.
With cover art by Andrea Offermann.
Praise for The Kairos Mechanism:
“A dark and wonderful machine, built of magic and history and held together with intricate prose. I loved this book.” –Laurel Snyder, author of National Book Award nominee Orphan Island
“Youthful corpses, smooth-talking villains, war, fate, and the occasional odd albatross. For readers left gasping and grasping at the end of the marvelous The Boneshaker comes a sequel that’s every bit as crisp and scintillating as its predecessor, with marvelous prose and even better characters. I’m torn between wishing I lived in Arcane and offering thanks to every god in creation that I’m safe merely reading about it instead.” –Betsy Bird, author of Wild Things: Acts of Mischief in Children’s Literature
“Milford’s Arcane stands at the crossroads of eeriness and adventure. Every visit begins with the best kind of shivery dread and ends with the fun of watching Natalie gin up her courage to tackle whatever stands in her way.” –Rachel Swirsky, Nebula Award-winning author of The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen’s Window
More about The Kairos Mechanism:
Observant folks have noticed that one of my books is much harder to find than others. The Kairos Mechanism was my first self-published book, meant as a sort of semi-sequel to The Boneshaker that would connect it to the events of The Broken Lands. It’s also a sort of sequel to Bluecrowne, if you were to follow Trigemine’s adventures rather than Lucy’s and Liao’s. I funded it on Kickstarter and used a startup e-book platform (which has since gone defunct) as well as McNally Jackson’s Espresso Book Machine (which has since been discontinued at that location). So Kairos has been basically out of print since, oh, 2018ish. I get emails almost daily from readers asking where they can find it, to which I always have to answer, with mixed feelings, “Unfortunately it’s basically out of print. The good news is, there’s an illustrated PDF available.” Mixed feelings because I don’t like that Kairos basically doesn’t exist in real-world form, so that makes me sad; however, the illustrated PDF is a very cool thing that includes art from some amazing young illustrators, so that makes me happy.
Back when I launched the Kickstarter, part of the budget I was shooting for was earmarked for paying young artists (in the case of Kairos, they ranged from about 9 to about 19 years of age) to illustrate scenes from the book, which would be included in a free/pay what you like PDF. That PDF is still available: you can get it here, on Gumroad. However, I’m changing the price to be a minimum of $5 (though you can absolutely pay more). I’ll donate the full amount of your payment (less Gumroad’s processing fee) to NARAL.
Bonus: you’ll get a hard-to-find Roaming World story with Natalie Minks and Foulk Trigemine, illustrated by some absolutely amazing kid artists.
Enjoy, thank you, and stay safe.
Yours with love,
Kate