The Nature of Things

Having recently finished reading N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy which featured stone humanoid creatures called stone eaters, I was well-prepared to meet Natasha Pulley's Peruvian markayuq, humanoid creatures that give every appearance of being stone statues. Gradually it becomes apparent that the markayuq are actually capable of movement and that they are guardians of a sacred forest. They are treated like Christian saints by the villagers in the area where they exist. The villagers bring offerings to them and pray to them. But all of this is far along into the story told in The Bedlam Stacks . The beginning is something else altogether. It is 1859 when we meet Merrick Tremayne on the family estate in Cornwall. He is - or has recently been - an employee (actually a smuggler) of the East Indian Company until he was caught in the middle of the Opium Wars in a battle near Canton where his leg was injured so badly that he almost lost it. Now, he's back home with his brothe...