AUTHORS’ NOTE

This book, and the series that it opens, neither follows nor precedes the books of the earlier Odyssey, but is at right angles to them: not a sequel or prequel, but an “orthoquel,” taking similar premises in a different direction.

The quotation from Rudyard Kipling’s “Cities and Thrones and Powers,” from Puck of Pook’s Hill (1906), is used by kind permission of AP Watt Ltd., on behalf of the National Trust for Places of Historical Interest or Natural Beauty.