Tor, 2000
Aurealis Award Winner, 2001
In a Fortieth Century America of ancient kingdoms and opulent courts, Hereditary engineering guilds and rigid class distinction, a centruies-old balance of power is shattered by a few dozen Australian infiltrators. Against a rich backdrop of war, chivalry and conspiracy, and airlord, abbess and fugitive join forces to stop the ultimate doomsday weapon from being launched.
“With remarkable imagination and insight, McMullen conjures factions, personalities, and plots, including well-placed glimpses of a lost, past America. A complex and lively story, rich with the action and reaction of human treachery, courage, battle-fuelled passion and quiet devotion.”
“McMullen’s prose is plain but lucid, and, nicely enriched with low human comedy, coincidence, and farce, is perfectly suited to explication of his crowded story of heroism and cupidity between old-fashioned air ace adventure and Arthurian romance … the diptych of Souls in the Great Machine and the Miocene Arrow is destined to become a classic.”
