Julian Shaw

When Gareth Edwards dies in a train crash, he emerges in The Meadow, a realm existing somewhere between life and death. Hunted and on the run, he finds refuge with a travelling circus and journeys with them across the splendour of this strange world, where pubs organise rebellions, cave dwellers archive Earth’s disasters – and where a network of monasteries are commissioning expeditions into the Welsh mountains that are too dangerous to speak of.

Gareth joins one of these expeditions, only to find something yet more perilous waiting for him – something with origins that reach beyond this world and into the trauma of his past.

In this, his debut novel, Julian Shaw has created an enchanting parallel universe, remarkable for its torrential bursts of action and overwhelming floods of emotion.