Book 1 - "The Etched City" by K.J. Bishop

They were bizarre pictures, fantasies like the image of the sphinx and basilisk, but stranger. In most a similar mood of narrative or theatre was present, but the sceneries were entirely imagined: queer, outlandishly opulent gardens, grottoes, pavilions, courts and chambers, in which whimsy and savagery were closely partnered in a thick amalgam of details. All the actors in these baroque fairylands were prodigies: not legendary creatures, these ones, but beings straight - or crookedly - out of private hallucinations: men, women and hermaphrodites with the attributes of flora, fauna and even machines.

The Copper Country is hot, dry, barren and riven by conflict. Two outlaws, former comrades in a failed revolution, chance to meet at a desert bar and become travelling companions again. When things get too hot for them in the Copper Country their wanderings lead them to the jungle city of Ashamoil, where life takes them in different directions. Gwynne falls on his feet, when a meeting with an old friend gets him a job in a criminal gang, while Raule, finding the doors of the medical establishment shut against her, becomes a doctor in a church-run hospital in a poor area.

A dark fantasy of art, religion and crime set in a city with a Victorian level of technology (steam trains and steam launches and gas lamps).