"The Bedlam Stacks" by Natasha Pulley is an interesting novel taking place in the 1800's, where an explorer finds some unusual characters and uncovers myths and truths. Thank you NetGalley, the author and publisher for the review copy. All opinions are my own.

Excellent Read! This book is a joy to read and very fast-paced in some parts and smooth in others. The characters are developed and interesting.

2.5/5 rating

Interesting genre crossover, thought provoking premise, but lost in execution.

I basically force fed myself this book. I wanted to give up about 40% into it, but unfortunately I'm a completionist. I suppose you could make the argument about novels being "slow burns" but I never witnessed a spark.

I never once knew where this book was heading and that was perhaps my favorite part. It reminded me of Bradbury's mars tales, The Sparrow, and episodes of the Twilight Zone all at the same time. An intriguing read and one I highly recommend.

The cover alone made me desperate to get hold of this book, not to mention the description. Exploding trees? Strange events in Peru? Sign me up now, please!

Natasha Pulley became an immediate favourite when I read her gorgeous, unexpected and completely engrossing Watchmaker of Filigree Street.

Here, magic and friendship are the ingredients in a lush, elemental and mysterious trek through Peru.

Merrick Tremayne is an East India Smuggler at a time when new experimental drugs ravaged the British Empire.
He is commissioned to find quinine in the lost mazes of Peru--- but few have successfully made the trek.

This is one book where the journey and not the destination is at the center. Merrick finds himself amidst unlikely allies, spiritual forces and a new friend named Raphael.

The genius of Pulley is that she will drop something in the first pages of a novel that will become incessantly important in the makeup and formation of the character and their relationships later on. Any one who has read Watchmaker knows the intense and soft power of this device.

I would also say that the core relationship is a male friendship which is developed in strange and lasting ways.

Secrets will be revealed and the resolution will come to a brilliant conclusion, but it is worth the sometimes slow-building, muse of a ride through maze and green and stealth footprints behind a winding road leading Merrick into worlds he would never dream of.

I was like an impatient child in the last few days before Christmas waiting for Natasha Pulley’s second novel. When I heard the title, I assumed it would be about a library in an asylum (I hope she will forgive me). And while that is still a book I would read, The Bedlam Stacks is more delightful than anything I could have imagined.

Set in 1859, a small band British explorers are sent to Peru to bring back cuttings of the cinchona tree, the source of the lifesaving quinine, a treatment for malaria. Merrick Tremayne worked as a plant thief for the East India Company in the past, and he nearly lost leg on his last mission.

He’s now homebound at his crumbling family home, aching for something to do despite his painful injury. He’s approached for the expedition to Peru because of his successful plant-smuggling reputation, but also because his crippled gait will be less suspicious to cinchona growers. And his grandfather had also visited decades before. He can simply say he is visiting his grandfather’s route while studying the coffee that grows in the area.

As Merrick and his friend Clements “Clem” Markham traipse into the mountainous interior of the Andean highlands, reality and fantasy slowly dissolve into one another. The altitude sickness makes them doubt the plan and even their decision to come at all. They are assigned a guide and keeper, Raphael, to make sure they arrive safely in New Bethlehem and do nothing but study coffee.

The sun came out suddenly. Greenish blue shadows fell across the boat and turned the river turquoise. The light was shining down through transparent parts in the stacks, which weren’t rock but glass. … When I put my hand out to the coloured shadow beside me, it was hot. The boatman steered us away from it but he didn’t quite move quickly enough. Where the tip of the boom swung into the light, the grass sail caught fire. ~ Pg. 103

The further they go into the wilderness, the stranger things become. The landscape is made of clear, cooled molten glass. The trees are highly combustible. A nearly invisible pollen gives of a golden glow when stirred. Stone statues can move. The cinchona grove lies on the other side of a forbidden forest. A line of salt has been drawn between the dark, impenetrable woods and the small town.

I didn’t understand until I straightened up and found what I thought was an oddly made oil lamp hanging on the wall from a piece of rope. It was made out of an old fishing float, but there was a clock’s key in the side. I turned it and heard clockwork skitter. Inside the glass ball, a dusty gold glow trailed a clock’s second-hand turning disembodied from a clock face. The light strengthened with each tick of the brass hand, and by the time a time minute had swept by, it was much brighter than a candle. When I held it close to my eye, I could see the matter of the light; it was tiny particles, floating like luminous icing sugar. ~Pg. 117

Merrick attempts to understand the physics of his surroundings, discern the local customs, translate the Quechua language and plan to retrieve cinchona cuttings without being caught. His outward patience and attempts to be a respectful guest gain the polite devotion of Raphael. The reader quickly becomes entranced as the book follows Merrick’s discovery and adventure as he quietly unravels the mysteries of the place.


Pulley creates details with such ease that the reader accepts the ethereal beauty of the deep Andean forest. And she does so while keeping one foot in the reality of colonialism, missionaries, Victorian exploration and commerce. Like Merrick, we know an entirely different world exists at home, but we choose to immerse ourselves in this one for awhile.

Pulley takes inspiration from real events and people. Robert Fortune was a botanist and plant hunter who stole tea from China on behalf of the British government. He too used Wardian cases to transport the precious commodity. And British interests really did want to grow cinchona trees to protect their subjects in India from malaria. The efforts were led by a British civil servant named Clem Markham, though the expedition was likely nothing like Pulley’s imaginings. (I can’t help but wonder if Pulley chose to name Merrick after the “Elephant Man” Joseph Merrick.)

The author also loosely ties The Bedlam Stacks to her debut novel, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street. We come to realize this book is set in the same world as Keita Mori. However, this is a much less frenetic, angst-ridden plot and Merrick is a grounded, unflappable protagonist, which is necessary for the novel to be successful. I enjoyed it even more than her first book. The reader will relish slowly absorbing the magic of The Bedlam Stacks.

Historical fiction with more than a dash of magical realism, this book is very well-written and transports the reader to a global 19th century where things like floating wood and stone-people exist. Because of course they would.

Pulley's imagination and eye for detail continue to impress me; I enjoyed her previous novel The Watchmaker of Filigree Street very much. But where that book was set primarily in England -- a setting more familiar to a larger pool of readers -- this book leaves England fast for the wild and unknown mountains of Peru. This shows extreme ambition from Pulley, as it allows for the showing off of both historical and on-location research; the normalization of South America as a continent of power players in the 'just-a-little-off-from-reality' story-world in which she has been writing; and, conversely, the exoticization of that same locale.

So that is the backdrop. It is fascinating! Unfortunately, I found the characters less so. I never really connected with protagonist Merrick, or anyone else. And I was also a little bored by the plot. Merrick's relationship with the Hispanicized local Raphael was nice, though given my previous reading of The Watchmaker of Filigree Street it felt like a step backwards in terms of ambivalent, ambiguous male friendship (so too, Raphael's older relationship with Merrick's grandfather, Harry). It should be noted that, as with TWoFS, Pulley largely eschews Victorian language and dialogue and goes for something a little more relatable to today's audience. There is again a notable lightness of tone. However, I feel like this approach doesn't work as well here because... colonialism, perhaps? There are race and class distinctions that would have existed, yet don't seem to exist at all when they're not convenient to the narrative.

I also didn't care for the appearance of a character from TWoFS in this book. It felt forced and gimmicky, and would have made very little sense to me if I'd read this book first.

Overall, I liked this book. Two novels in, Pulley already has a unique and recognizable style and is an Author To Watch, one who deftly crosses bridges from Literary Fiction to historical fiction to fantasy. But I do wish this book paid as much attention to character depth as it does to tone and whimsy.

I loved this book! Definitely going to go back and read Watchmaker... soon.

I must admit that I have yet to read <i>The Watchmaker of Filigree Street</i>, so I maintain a vague understanding that there is some overlap between the two novels, but failed to recognize any recurring references or characters.

Occasionally, I just open a book and start reading. And that's how I started this one--without skimming any reviews or finding any blurbs. From the title, I thought the action might eventually end up in the records or library of the infamous asylum, and when the narrative opens with the injured ex-smuggler Merrick Tremayne coalescing at his family's visibly crumbling estate, that didn't seem improbable. After all, at his insistence that statues are moving and trees are exploding, madness doesn't seem an improbable conclusion.

Fortunately, as the old house is falling down around his ears, the India Office insists Tremayne join their latest Peru expedition for a new source of quinine. The perilous adventure that follows consists of a page-turning whirlwind of intriguing characters, stunning locales, and unexpected...well, everything. I'd hate to spoil any of it, since I suspect discovering twists in the path and plot along with Tremayne is a lot of what made this read so much fun.

But if you aren't ready to run to your library and dig up this book yet, I will say that <spoiler>I chose to read this novel as a rather slow-burning, magical queer romance</spoiler> and it was lovely!

<i>I received a copy of this work from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.</i>

The Bedlam Stacks is something I thought I’d really enjoy! I had seen good reviews and it sounded like a really beautiful fantasy story. Unfortunately this one missed the mark for me. The writing is good, I will say that. The descriptions are beautiful and the world is unique.

However, I felt zero connection to the main character and as a result, honestly didn’t care about his journey or mission. In fact, I quickly got bored and really had to push myself to finish this one. I started to wonder what the point to this all was because the pacing felt very slow and I kept expecting MORE but really not getting anything. I do think this is a case of it’s not you it’s me though so I would still recommend if you are a fan of fantasy!

Merrick Tremayne worries he may be going insane. Yes, prolonged removal from society for recuperation on his family estate in Cornwall doesn't help, but he has precedence; his mother went insane at about his age and is locked up in an asylum. A very nice asylum, but an asylum nonetheless. She claims she saw a stone statue move and Merrick is sure that he has just seen the same thing. Therefore the arrival of his old comrade in arms, Sir Clements Markham from the East India Company with his wife Minna is a welcome diversion. Clem wants Merrick to go with him to Peru and smuggle out some cinchona cuttings because India is in desperate need of quinine, which is made from the bark of the cinchona trees, and the Company is sick of paying the Peruvian monopoly. Merrick is uncertain, before his injury he wouldn't have questioned his ability to pull off this heist, but now? Yet Clem is insistent that the expedition needs Merrick. Their destination is New Bethlehem, lovingly christened Bedlam. The Tremayne family has a connection to that town going back generations. Merrick's grandfather lived there for awhile learning to speak Quechua. Therefore if their cover as "mapmakers" is exposed Merrick's connection might save their lives. Merrick accepts. Mainly because if he is going insane he might as well go out with one last great adventure. With their guide, Raphael, who is the local priest in Bedlam, Merrick learns that what is commonly accepted by the world at large isn't necessarily so once you get off the beaten track. There is danger in the woods, statues that are revered, and a mystery surrounding Raphael... how could this young man have known Merrick's grandfather for a start?

I love magical realism. I love seeing the world we know and love with that little something extra. That spark of magic that makes everything just that much more marvelous. Most people think of magical realism in a modern setting yet, when you think about it, my most favorite subgenre of all, Regency Magic, is magical realism but set in an historical setting. Because I love nothing more than magical historical fiction. Seriously, I can't think of a combination of all the disparate things I love coming together perfectly than in this motley blend. Which is why I love The Bedlam Stacks. Sure, it's set some twenty-two to thirty-nine years after the Regency, depending on whether you believe the Regency ended when Queen Victoria took the throne or before, but it has all those wonderful elements that I love about Regency Magic. There's the real, human need for quinine, but there's also the deeper human need for fables and folk tales and how they come to be. This gives The Bedlam Stacks a mythical quality. There's what is real and what people believe to be real. And Sir Clements Markham's 1859 journey for cinchona actually happened. It happened entirely different, but the core, the basic framework is there. Which is why the magic is so easily grafted on. It's believable that in this foreign country you could wander into a land that time had forgot. Because magic is just something we don't understand. As I remember Philippa Gregory saying in a talk once about writing The White Queen, she wrote the witchcraft as witchcraft because that is how it appeared to the people of the time. This merging of the magical and the historical results in a fairy tale that would be worthy of Doctor Who. Early Doctor Who. Because there's your learning moment and then there's your adventure.

But then there's the Steampunk element. As you probably have guessed over the years by my reading choices and some of my sartorial choices at conventions I have fully embraced Steampunk in many aspects of my life. And there is this element here. Though I would go further and analyze this more, because I think most people are basing this label on the cover coupled with Merrick's insistence that the statues in Bedlam are clockwork. Needless to say covers are designed to sell and Merrick is very much mistaken. Yet I do believe that categorizing The Bedlam Stacks on the outer fringes of Steampunk isn't wrong. The reason I believe this is because of the lamps. Yes, the lamp on the cover is one of them. Sure, they have clockwork in them, but it's not the clockwork in my mind that makes them Steampunk. What makes them Steampunk is that they are utilizing technology and knowledge available to them and creating something new and functional. Much like the fantastical creations in Steampunk based on steam power being the only option these lamps use clock gears to constantly stir up the pollen of the trees in the woods that give off light. The Bedlamites have made something that is completely unique to their region, trees with lighted pollen and a tendency to go boom, and found a way to make it work for them. Throughout the Stacks, there are just little things here and there that show the ingenuity of these people, but there is no greater example than in these lights. I also very much want one for myself.

While the Steampunk elements might be a fascinating aspect of this book it's not why I am so in love with it. What got me was the human element. The connection that each and every character has to the other. Clem and Merrick, who have a strained friendship, in fact prior to his injury Merrick didn't even think they would consider each other friends. Seeing them put through their paces and how their comradely nature erodes is a feeling anyone who has traveled with friends will relate to, and they didn't even have the ability to have the whole music/no music while driving argument. The business nature of Clem versus the more exploratory nature of Merrick allows Merrick to forge connections in Bedlam with the locals. He becomes a part of their community. And as the community of Bedlam is made up of all injured or disfigured people Merrick's leg injury doesn't seem like such a burden anymore. He is considered more fit than the majority of the residents. This, more than sitting in Cornwall with his brother, does more to help him recover than anything else. Yet it's his constantly evolving friendship with Raphael that is the cornerstone, the bedrock, the ONE THING, that this book is about. Two men, from totally different cultures and times, coming together to be friends. The layers of Raphael's reluctance that are broken down and through over time, that let Merrick see who he truly is, that's almost the most magical aspect of The Bedlam Stacks. Though I do have this caveat, their relationship is ambiguous to whether or not it evolves into romantic feelings. Some people are all for this, some people are not. I have no problem with this and do agree that what they felt for each other was love, but I'm uncertain if I think or want it to be romantic in nature. At the end this reveal seems a little forced. They love each other and I don't think it needs definition.

Throughout the whole story, magical and human, I have come to one conclusion, I would die of altitude sickness. I had kind of thought this in passing before but now I have 100% certainty. I would die. This started years ago when watching An Idiot Abroad with Karl Pilkington when he made it three-quarters of the way to Machu Picchu and gave up requesting a Sir David Attenborough-esque voice-over. I'm pretty sure this would be me. Is the journey worth the reward? Worth the pain? Well The Bedlam Stacks made me think 100% no. As Natasha Pulley said, she had no idea the horror of altitude sickness and now her research made sense once she experienced it first had. The inability to think, like you're living in a fog. The headaches, the nausea, the incapacitation, all of it! Weird asides like Sir Clements Markham being unconcerned his team were being followed, because he didn't have the ability to care or worry! Yet the nail in my coffin was the whole nosebleeds issue. As in you get them all the time up there where the air is clear. Here's the thing. I have a lifelong fear of nosebleeds. Why you might ask? Well, I used to have them daily. Also horrifically. Once I had a nosebleed while in Milwaukee when I was little that lasted the entire trip, two full days. I just laid on my uncle's living room floor thinking everything in his house is white what will he do if I get some blood spattered about... he went ballistic when he thought I broke his toy robot, which I didn't by-the-way. Once in grade school I got a nosebleed at recess that soaked my entire sweatshirt before I could get to the nurse's office. This all culminated in my having to have my nose cauterized in 2002. Therefore to willingly go somewhere where this could happen? Sorry I'm out. Ah books, showing us places we could never go to. Now that's magic.

My apologies - for some reason the file for this book did not download, and I did not realize until after it had archived. Thank you for the opportunity to read it - I'm sorry I missed it, and I'll look for it on Amazon. (Star rating is not reflective of any opinion, but only of the fact that Netgalley will not allow submission without)

Magical realism done wonderfully! I have to admit I had not read this author previously and did not realize there was a companion novel, but I'm not sure if that took away from reading this at all. It is a completely unique book in writing and the story is just epic really.

I was enraptured by the setting of Cornwall and I was completely invested with the adventure of the book. The main character was interesting to read. The only thing that was difficult for me was when the book went into paragraphs that were hard to follow along with and didn't seem to have purpose, but they were few and far between. I still really enjoyed the book overall.

As much as I tried to get into this book, I just couldn't. But that is more my end then anything else. I will try to read this book again in the future, but I do think people who liked "Name of the Rose" and Carlos Ruiz Zafon.

I can easily see how this book would be highly entertaining for many readers. The premise sounds interesting and it, for these purposes, seems to be well written. Unfortunately, the story line lost my interest rather quickly as I found the pacing a bit slow. I definitely see the promise in the story but it just wasn't for me.

Well written! I love historical fiction, but get picky about it, too. This one wins hands down! Love the adventure in it, the magic.... Wonderful stor

I would like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Bedlam Stacks had some really creative and fascinating ideas and the writing was very descriptive. But boy was it a chore to read!! I found it very slow moving and overall the story line never really clicked for me. I also struggled connecting with most of the characters – they did not seem fully developed with the possible exception of Raphael. All in all, there were moments of brilliance peeking through but overall it was a disappointing read.

Unfortunately, this one just didn't grab me much at all.