Review: The Lost Future of Pepperharrow, by Natasha Pulley

1888. Five years after they met in The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, Thaniel Steepleton, an unassuming translator, and Keita Mori, the watchmaker who remembers the future, are traveling to Japan. Thaniel has received an unexpected posting to the British legation in Tokyo, and Mori has business that is taking him to Yokohama. Thaniel's brief is odd: the legation staff have been seeing ghosts, and Thaniel's first task is to find out what's really going on. But while staying with Mori, he starts to experience ghostly happenings himself. For reasons Mori won't--or can't--share, he is frightened. Then he vanishes.
Meanwhile, something strange is happening in a frozen labor camp in Northern Japan. Takiko Pepperharrow, an old friend of Mori's, must investigate. As the weather turns bizarrely electrical and ghosts haunt the country from Tokyo to Aokigahara forest, Thaniel grows convinced that it all has something to do with Mori's disappearance--and that Mori may be in serious danger.

"Grace is not a thing you performed, but a weight you carried".

Natasha Pulley's The Lost Future of Pepperharrow is the stunning conclusion to the duology that began with The Watchmaker of Filigree Street. The journey of Thaniel and Mori, together with their adoptive daughter, reaches new highs and lows as we learn more about Mori, his morality and the lengths he's willing to go to to protect who he loves.

Mori is such an intriguing character because in another book, he could easily be a villain (in fact, some characters think he is). But we see him through Thaniel's loving eyes, we see his vulnerabilities and strengths, and we can't help but be completely enamored with him, with his quiet strength and his resolve. His are the lines that make us dissolve into a sobbing mess, his the trials and tribulations, in the pursuit of something he eventually can't even remember.

Thaniel gets a much needed depth too, and it's fascinating to see how he navigates his relationship with Mori, with the orphan Six, and with the new character Pepperharrow, a tragic and compelling figure. All the new characters felt alive and believable, with complex motivations of their own, and I was delighted to even find some old faces from the first book.

This sequel was so much better, both in composition and pacing. The prose was of course lovely already in the first book, but the author has such graceful writing, like a warm hug even in the direst circumstances. I loved that we got some more information about how Mori's clairvoyance works, and the ether, and glimpses of this alternate history. I especially loved the change in setting, with the author taking us to Japan and demonstrating a deft hand in painting the country through the eyes of a stranger. I enjoyed her choices in terms of dialogue and her note about it at the end.

The Lost Future of Pepperharrow is a masterful conclusion to a lovely duology.

✨ 5 stars

📚📚📚 IF YOU LOVE THIS, YOU MIGHT LIKE:

* The Kingdoms, by Natasha Pulley

for: memory, time