The Orloj of Shanghai
The Keeper Cycle's second quest begins with a single golden feather, fallen out of a clear summer sky onto the Bund - dropped by the Golden Rooster, eldest of the Orloj's three sons, keeping a promise nine hundred years old. It summons the six young keepers, with Hina Tanaka and her ledger, to the one city of the quest that will not hold still - Shanghai, where a squat stone tower called Big Ching chimed Westminster over the river, and where, behind the real city, a held city is waiting for the greatest clock ever lost. Nine hundred years ago, Su Song built a tower forty feet high, driven by nothing but falling water, that told the hour, tracked the stars, and struck its bells with little wooden men - and he wrote a book so the knowledge could never be lost. The tower fell anyway. The book survived - as a fragment, nineteen leaves of forty-seven, stopping exactly where the heart begins. Now the six must recover the missing pages, master the lessons of the west and north, and raise the half-built tower - beam by beam, its mended joints seamed in gold - until a small brass heart that has refused to beat for nine centuries consents, at last, to hold the wheel and let it go, on the beat. The Orloj of Shanghai is a magical tale filled with non-stop action and thrills, as well as timeless wisdom through its unforgettable fables and poems.
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