The second sight of Zachary Cloudesley by Sean Lusk

If you were going by the cover alone, you would probably pick up this novel because of the attractive design and the equally attractive name of Zachary Cloudesley. To be honest, that is exactly why I picked it up and once I started reading, I was not disappointed.

This is a quest novel starting in 1754 and takes the reader from London to the far flung reaches of the Ottoman Empire. It is exactly the kind of novel that I imagine would be considered by Netflix for a feature film, as it ticks all the diversity boxes, but somehow blends everything in so well that the whole book doesn't strain with the effort of being overly woke.

I was hooked from the first chapter as the book opens with a woman in labour with all the associated difficulties that stem from life in the mid-eighteen century. Back then, it didn't matter what class of woman you were, or which kind of midwife you could afford, childbirth was a tricky business and there were no guarantees for anyone's safety. The author, Sean Lusk, perfectly evokes the living conditions of the time and there are plenty of nice little details on what they characters were wearing or eating to flesh out the atmosphere and make it all real.

As the storyline moves to Constantinople, the author then deftly conjures up a radically different backdrop and by the time you throw in all the clockwork automata, you have the basis for a fascinating yarn. Once again, I am amazed to find that the book is a debut novel. How do writers manage to sit down to write their first book and produce something like this? It is a truly great achievement as the pace is good all the way through, and although some elements require the reader to free their imagination, everything seems perfectly plausible, and that is what counts.

The book was one of the novels selected for Sara Cox's Between the Covers program on the BBC, and I can imagine it went down very well with her audience as it is neither too highbrow or too simplified, and for most of us, that is exactly where we like a book to be pitched.

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