Product Description

First in a groundbreaking trilogy, this is no ordinary tale, no ordinary book. Shanghai, 1920. While on board the "Expedient", Doug and Becca MacKenzie stumble across an amazing secret. What unfolds is a story of two young people caught up in an astonishing adventure and a story of an ancient order created to protect the world from evil...Using a remarkable archive of documents, the extraordinary events that took place over 85 years ago have been painstakingly reconstructed for the very first time.; Illustrated in colour, this fiction adventure comes from a startling new talent.; Major PR and publicity coverage, including online viral campaign and microsite.; Trade and consumer advertising, including nationwide outdoor 6-sheet displays.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #56185 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

About the Author
Joshua Mowll studied at art school before working as a graphic artist in newspapers. He has worked for The Mail on Sunday since 1994, illustrating everything from maps, diagrams and space flights to medical procedures and aircraft crashes. Joshua didn't think about writing until he inherited the Honourable Guild of Specialists archive from his great-aunt. This is his first book.

Customer Reviews

A first class read
Got this as a Christmas presnt for my kids and they loved it.
They also persuaded me to read it and I have to say it is just as good as they told me.
All the maps, plans, diagrams, character sketches and other illustrations assist in bringing this story to life at several levels.

Looking forward to the next book in the trilogy...

Great for kids not so great for "kidults"
I picked this up for around UKP3 in a remaindered bookstore and am glad that I did - it's a lovely little volume - but also glad I didn't pay more.

The clothbound hardcover, with it's elastic-banded journal format is a very nicely put-together artefact, with heaps of great sketches and illustrations and lovingly-detailed pull-out charts.

However, the writing is frankly poor (compared with, say, the Philips Pullman and Reeve) and I couldn't wait to finish, in order to start a better book. This may be okay for children - but even then I suspect I'm doing them a disservice, as they deserve good writing, too. Basically, the prose was clunky (under a facade of pacy brevity) and the story was rather cliché-ridden. Certain things - like the protaganists names - just didn't sit right and characterisation was two-dimensional at best. A fun romp, but not one of the great achievements of recent "young-person's literature".

Operation Red Jericho
This is book illustrates the move of fantasy into reality. The story has not yet become real but plays at the edge of the possible and creates the feeling of a divergent past that was not realised.
The apparatus of the book, maps, diagrams, file entries furnishes its world with artifacts for the archeologist in all of us and enables the author to imply structures not described. Ideal for those whose imagination will engage in myth making