Wild, bewitching and propulsive, Sean Lusk's drama of prophetic visions, exotic feats of engineering, transgressive desire and familial love is one of those novels that makes you rejoice that we are a storytelling species. The Second Sight of Zachary Cloudesley, peopled with vivid characters and sumptuously-imagined scenery is a triumph of the imagination, of language, and of generosity. * Liz Jensen *

The year is 1754. He has had an interesting life already, having spent time in Constantinople, and as the story progresses, he ends up there again. But first, the baby. Zachary. His mother, Alice, dies as she delivers him. Abel doesn’t know what to do. Longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2023 and the Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award 2023.It’s great appeal lies in the fact that while there are elements of the fantastical – the title speaks to the eponymous young protagonist’s ability to divine the soul and future life course of a person simply by touching them – and the expansively imaginative, it is also content to spend much time as needed with its characters, allowing them to tell their story without hurry or interruption and with full emotional effect. Abel is away in the workshop much of the day, nd Frances begins to think it might not be so difficult to persuade him that it will be best for Zachary to come home with her to Tring. If needs be Mrs Morley and her noisy daughter with her spotty face and bilious inclination can come too.” (P. 49)

Since his accident, Zachary is plagued by visions that reveal the hearts and minds of those around him. A gift at times and a curse at others, it is nonetheless these visions that will help him complete a journey that he was always destined to make—to travel across Europe to Constantinople and find out what happened to his father all those years ago. The prose is very well written, and it is genuinely funny, but the plot wasn't strong enough to hold attention. The father-son relationship is one of the book's strongest features, and I very much felt for Abel's plight. It’s a rare book indeed that doesn’t transport you far away from the everyday, taking you on a richly imaginative journey, whether it’s into someone’s life, their innermost thoughts or to magical places that defy the intervention of the ordinary. Dystopian Fiction Books Everyone Should Read: Explore The Darker Side of Possible Worlds and Alternative Futures But then a near-fatal accident will take Zachary away from the workshop and his family. His father will have to make a journey that he will never return from. And, years later, only Zachary can find out what happened.He is also the bearer of an extraordinary gift; at the touch of a hand, Zachary can see into the hearts and minds of the people he meets. You can see where this is all leading. Belief in magic should sit uneasily with belief in science. Yet this was an era in which alchemy, the ancient ‘science’ of the pursuit of the philosopher’s stone and the elixir of life lingered on, and while the new science often disparaged the old, it could not quite throw off the traces of magical expectation that so often accompanies scientific breakthrough. Today we still await the ‘magic’ of nuclear fusion to give us limitless, safe and almost free energy, after all.