Flights and Chimes and Mysterious Times

In her first middle-grade novel, Trevayne (Coda and Chorus) introduces Jack Foster, a discontented boy who finds an otherworldly London populated by creatures mechanical and magical. To live in smoggy, brassy Londinium is to be damaged%E2%80%94either injured by the mechanics of industry or corroded by pollution%E2%80%94and rebuilt. To be complete and healthy ("pink," as a native observes of Jack) is the exception. This "Empire of the Clouds" is ruled by the mercurial Lady who sends Lorcan, her general and once her son, to fetch her a new human boy to love. Disguising himself as a spiritualist, Lorcan ingratiates himself with Jack's s%C3%A9ance-obsessed mother, but Jack finds the doorway into Londinium on his own, where he befriends a windup girl, her physician-mechanic creator, and a trader in souls before he's forced to join the Lady's court. Trevayne's well-wrought prose and characters like Dr. Snailwater, who fixes those his city wounds, and Lorcan, whose villainy is tempered with a sad desperation to be loved, will keep readers invested. Ages 8%E2%80%9312. Author's agent: Brooks Sherman, the Bent Agency. (May)