England, 1967: ruled by the power of the Catholic Church, as it has been since the failure of the Protestant Reformation. In this England there are steam trains, but no internal combustion engine; rifles but no electricity; heresy but no democracy. And in this England, magic works. England, 1967; young Tobias Oakley, out on an illicit nighttime expedition, meets an elven woman - and is chosen for initiation into the secrets of necromancy. Tobias has a powerful talent and his injudicious use of it brings him to the attention of the Church - whose Thaumaturgical Division soon recruits him. And so Tobias enters the Church, beginning his career amid the brothels and taverns of the teeming slums of the diocese of Southwark. From there his progress, if not steady - there is something about Tobias that arouses unease in his superiors - is generally upwards. As a curate, as a priest, as a soldier in the bloody war against heresy and finally as an eminent expert on diabolism, Tobias becomes a power in the English Catholic Church. And as he does so, he pursues his second career: as liar, drug smuggler, rakehell, mass murderer, betrayer, vicious libertine and consorter with demons. For the elf legacy that has shaped his life has robbed him of something vital. And when Tobias, in an effort finally to discover some meaning in life, embarks on a fantastic and perilous quest through supernatural realms he finds himself at the last confronting a savage irony.

Baron Frankenstein fashioned just one creature from the remnants of the dead, but the Governments who have hijacked his discoveries see the advantage of resurrection on an industrial scale. What better way to fight their never-ending wars than with armies of obedient undead soldiers, recycled from earlier battles? And how better to silence their own citizens who protest at ceaseless conflict and plundered graveyards?Set in the 1830s, Frankenstein’s Legions details an alternative history in which Frankensteinian science is a reality, revived after patchy prohibition by a second and even more fanatical French Revolution. The republican regime, inspired by zeal and desperation, has swept over Europe, employing inexhaustible swarms of zombie-like (or Lazaroid) troops. The remaining independent nations, including England, are obliged to shed their scruples and likewise raise Lazaroid armies.Across this crazed and Gothic history stride Julius Frankenstein, soldier nephew of the notorious scientist; Charles Babbage inventor of the proto-computer Difference Engine; and the Honourable Augusta Ada, Countess of Lovelace, genius daughter of Lord Byron. Pulling their strings – they believe – are the puppetmasters Talleyrand, French statesman par excellence and now a renegade in English employ; and Sir Percy Blakeney, sometime Scarlet Pimpernel and current head of the British Secret Service.Meanwhile, the French have been unwise enough to revive their recently deceased Emperor. The intention was simply to pick the brain of history’s foremost military mind. However, the risen Emperor Napoleon is developing fresh ambitions of his own… WARNING: CONTAINS ADULT CONTENTAbout the AuthorJohn Whitbourn has had nine novels published in the UK, USA and Russia since winning the BBC & Victor Gollancz First Fantasy Novel prize with A Dangerous Energy in 1991. His works have received favourable reviews in The Times, Telegraph, and Guardian, amongst others, and he is widely regarded as one of the pioneers of the New Weird. Most recently, his published novels include the Downs-Lord trilogy concerning the establishment of empire in an alternative, monster-ridden England, and Frankenstein’s Legions, a sort-of steampunk sequel to Mary Shelley’s seminal science fiction work, in which the techniques of creating life from the dead are turned to political ends. A former archaeologist and British civil servant, he lives in at least one of the several parallel Binscombes, of which he says: “The scenery and backdrop to the stories may be seen and experienced, in Binscombe itself, and Farncombe and Compton and Godalming and Guildford and Epsom and elsewhere. The inspiration for them lives on, independent and blissfully ignorant of me.” John adds, “All that a reader need know about me is that I’m struggling up the shore of middle age, living with my wife, Liz, my son, Joseph and daughters, Rebecca and Esther, in a part of the south country where the graveyards and old records are littered, over the last four centuries or so, with strangers bearing my surname. Beyond that there is silence, but I suspect we go back still further.”