THE BEDLAM STACKS

Extreme Gardener’s World

released OUT NOW! 337 pages | Hardback/ebook

Author Natasha Pulley Publisher Bloomsbury

Had Indiana Jones been a 19th century horticulturalist with a gammy leg he may very well have had an adventure like one from The Bedlam Stacks.

Natasha Pulley’s follow-up to the exquisite magic realism of The Watchmaker Of Filigree Street is cut from very similar cloth, even though this time round the genre is more Jules Verne’s voyages extraordinaires than Victorian noir. Having said that, while it’s not a direct sequel, it does become clear as the novel progresses that it exists in the same universe.

Merrick Tremayne is a globetrotting gardener much in demand by the East India Company. Starting out dealing with their tea trade, he really made his name when they moved into the opium business. This also led to him almost losing a leg. Mouldering away in his mouldy ancestral home, he’s called out of retirement for a mission to an uncharted part of Peru. Ostensibly he’s sent there to secretly harvest seedlings from a cinchona tree from under the noses of gun-toting forces who control the region; cinchonas are a source of quinine, a treatment for malaria, so prices are rocketing. However, what Tremayne actually finds there are ancient Incan myths come to life, wood with extraordinary properties, answers to family secrets and – we kid you not – naturally exploding ducks.

Pulley’s prose is as delightfully playful and evocative as ever. She paints a hidden world that’s every bit as colourful as James Cameron’s Pandora, packed with vibrant and quirky characters, and fascinating historical detail that never feels forced. The narrative is more linear than Filigree Street and the mysteries not quite as intriguing. The ending, also, doesn’t have quite the jawdropping revelation you might expect. But this is a book about a journey – both literally and figuratively. So book your tickets now, because you’ll love the views along the way.

One character mentions using a “time machine” in 1860, but that phrase wasn’t coined by HG Wells until 1895.