When Edwin Crassus inherits his late father's forgotten repair shop, he expects to spend his days fixing clocks, radios, and battered household treasures.
Instead, the machines begin to speak.
A grandfather clock filled with impossible birds. A double-decker bus that refuses to abandon its final route. A gramophone that imprisons a dead singer's voice. A typewriter that cannot lie. A house that walks to protect its last owner. A canal that has learned to bite. A railway that runs beneath Tuesday itself.
Each impossible repair draws Edwin deeper into a hidden London where forgotten machines remember everything humanity has done to them-both its greatest kindnesses and its deepest betrayals.
Watching from beneath the city is the Engine King, an ancient intelligence preparing to decide whether humankind deserves the loyalty of the machines it created.
One repair cannot change the world.
But twelve acts of compassion might.
Blending modern fantasy, myth, mystery, and quiet horror, The Gears of Memory is a collection of twelve interconnected stories. Filled with strange places, unforgettable machines, melancholy wonder, and hopeful magic, it asks a simple question:
If the world you've built could judge you... what evidence would it find?