The Second Ether Series Reading Order

Maxim Arturovitch Pyatnitski, that charming but despicable mythomaniac who first appeared in Byzantium Endures, is back.… Maxim Arturovitch Pyatnitski, that charming but despicable mythomaniac who first appeared in Byzantium Endures, is back. Having fled Bolshevik Russia in late 1919, Pyat’s progress is a series of leaps from crisis to crisis, as he begins affairs with a Baroness and a Greek prostitute while undertaking schemes to build flying machines in Europe and the United States. His devotion to flamboyantly racist, particularly anti-Semitic doctrines—like his devotion to cocaine—remains unabated, and he both sings the praises of Mussolini and lectures across America for the Ku Klux Klan. (His best kept secret is of course, the fact that he is Jewish.) As the novel ends, Pyat is in Hollywood—his new Byzantium—hobnobbing with movie stars and dreaming of making films like those of his hero, D.W. Griffith. Engineer, braggart, addict, Pyat is a magnificent invention, a genius of innocent vituperation: his finest achievement (and that of the author) is that his own warped and deluded vision is powerful enough to redefine reality. This authoritative edition presents the first time this work has been available in paperback in the U.S., along with a new introduction by Alan Wall. read more

Michael Moorcock, returns with the story of the times and trials of Dennis Dover, former rock guitarist, photojournalist… Michael Moorcock, returns with the story of the times and trials of Dennis Dover, former rock guitarist, photojournalist, paparazzo, and loyal denizen of Mother London, and his brilliant, beautiful, and socially conscious cousin, Rosie Beck. Since childhood they have been inseparable, delighting in the daily discoveries of a life with no limits. But now a powerful, unstoppable force that consumes the past indiscriminately, leaving nothing of substance in its wake, threatens the metropolis that nurtured them. The terminator is named John Barbican Begg. A hanger-on from Denny and Rosie's youth, he has become the morally corrupt center of their London, and the richest, most rapacious creature in the Western Hemisphere, with but one goal: to devour the entire world. And their only choices left are to join in, drop out ... or plot to destroy him. read more