The Gaze

It does not hunt for blood. It hunts for perfection. Eldridge City is a bastion of brass and steam, walled against the feral wilds and the horrors that roam them. But something older than the walls has found its way inside. Maximus Voss, heir to an antiquities fortune and the city's quietest occult investigator, knows the signs of a dark harvest: rooms sealed in frost, sleepwalkers whispering of slits in the sky, a thorn-circled eye burned into a missing tinker's wall. Joined by Eliza Crowe, a journalist with her own score against the shadows, Max follows the trail to a truth the city's masters would rather bury. The Gaze is watching. It measures. It allocates. And it has decided that human warmth is an inefficiency to be corrected. To save the city, and the woman who has become far more than an ally, Max must fly beyond the walls and face an intelligence older than the wilds, armed with steel, wit, and one desperate question it cannot answer. To defeat a god of cold logic, he will have to outthink the unthinking. Book One of The Life and Times of Max Voss, a gaslamp fantasy series for readers of occult mysteries, clever heroes, and worlds worth lingering in. Early readers say: "The Gaze is a great villain. The final confrontation was extremely good." "I feel like I'm in a D&D world. I keep imagining my own character." "A great ending. It makes me want to know what happens next."