Dimensions
160 x 235 x 31mm
Ethan Gage enters France bent on revenge against Bonaparte for the kidnapping of his son and trauma to his family (who unexpectedly follows him to Paris). The City of Lights is over-the-top romantic splendor. It's a time of jewels and squalor, heroic patriotism and mean ambition, grand strategy and back-alley conspiracy. Ethan becomes a spy while his wife, Astiza, works to sabotage Napoleon's coronation as emperor by using the religious relic The Crown of Thorns (still displayed in Paris) that is alleged to come from the crucifixion.
When the couple is thwarted by Napoleon's coronation by the Pope as emperor, they flee toward England after a swashbuckling chase down the Seine. Astiza sacrifices her own freedom so Ethan has time to escape. At Walmer Castle on the English coast, Ethan joins the inventive campaign of Smith, Fulton, rocket inventor William Congreve, and smuggler Tom Johnstone to halt Napoleon's intended invasion, a campaign that leads our hero to the decisive naval climax at Trafalgar, where Admiral Horatio Nelson triumphs but dies. In the gale that followed the battle, Ethan is shipwrecked and this time, may not find his family.
Filled with the romanticism and glitter of the period, William Dietrich has woven a glorious tale that sees Ethan, once again, embroiled in European history and the fate of the modern world.
