THE STORY SO FAR . . .

On a school trip, George breaks a fragment from a carving of a dragon on the front of the Natural History Museum. This wakes an ancient force imprisoned in the Stone—a rough block hidden deep in the City of London. As an immediate result, a vengeful carving of a pterodactyl peels off the side of the building and begins chasing him. Just when all seems lost, the Gunner, a statue of a World War I soldier, steps off a war memorial and saves him.

So begins George’s ordeal, trapped in a layer of London, an unLondon in which the mutually hostile tribes of statues in the city, the human-based spits and the inhuman taints, walk and talk and live in an uneasy truce, a truce that George’s action has thrown into jeopardy.

The thing that makes his ordeal all the harder to endure is that no one else in London can see what is happening to him. Except Edie Laemmel. Edie’s a glint. Glints are women or girls who have a gift that enables them to touch stone and metal and experience past events that have imprinted themselves in them. But nobody’s ever explained Edie’s gift to her, so she just sees it as a curse and thinks she’s crazy. She’s also on the run.

George, Edie, and the Gunner set off on a journey to make amends; but unknown to them, the Stone has alerted the Walker, one of its servants, who stalks them through the streets with the help of his minion, the Raven.

On this journey, George discovers that he has special powers, which make him a target for the enraged taints. One of the dragon statues that guards the City of London slashes a scar onto George’s hand. Another statue, the smiling but sinister Black Friar, tells him it is a maker’s mark, which identifies George as a maker, someone with a special gift for sculpting things from stone or metal. The Friar also tells them to find the Stone Heart and put the broken dragon carving back, to make amends for the damage George has done. Helped by benign spits and threatened by violent taints, George, Edie, and the Gunner eventually find themselves at the Stone Heart of London, the London Stone.

But once there, the Gunner sacrifices himself to try to save Edie, and ultimately falls into the clutches of the Walker. It is left to George to use his newfound gifts as a maker to rescue him.

And now the story continues. . . .