Hardcover, 384 pages
Published May 25, 2021 by Bloomsbury Publishing.
A time twisting alternative history that asks whether it's worth changing the past to save the future, even if it costs you everyone you've ever loved.
Joe Tournier has a bad case of amnesia. His first memory is of stepping off a train in the nineteenth-century French colony of England. The only clue Joe has about his identity is a century-old postcard of a Scottish lighthouse that arrives in London the same month he does. Written in illegal English—instead of French—the postcard is signed only with the letter “M,” but Joe is certain whoever wrote it knows him far better than he currently knows himself, and he's determined to find the writer. The search for M, though, will drive Joe from French-ruled London to rebel-owned Scotland and finally onto the battle ships of a lost empire's Royal Navy. In the process, Joe will remake history, and himself.
I should have liked this book more. The story was clever, the theme interesting and the historical narrative was vivid. But it just did not click - partially this was due to the whiney voice the audiobook narrator uses for the main character which stopped me liking him at all, but ultimately the whole thing felt very disjointed jumping from chapter to chapter.
