"Tidhar is a spellbinding stylist with a spell-casting imagination. Part fantasy, part sci-fi, part surreal mainstream, this novel plonks the reader into a vast, surreal landscape, the Escapement, in which clowns and stone monsters and cowboys and classic fictional characters coexist in a shifting tableau. The Stranger is our hero, a warrior searching for mythical flowers, even as in another universe he sits at his sick boy's side in a hospital. None of this should work but all of it does, the author managing to evoke sadness, awe, and even humor. I could only compare my reading to old Philip K. Dick married to Samuel R. Delaney. The Escapement is a captivating triumph of imagination."
--Watch

"A father wrangles with his impending grief in a steampunk, Wild West alternate universe in Lavie Tidhar's dazzling novel The Escapement . . . Those who enter the Escapement should strap themselves in for horrors and wonders galore. Filled with contorted fairy tales, myths, and familiar stories, Lavie Tidhar's latest novel is both a fantastical diversion and a moving articulation of deep parental love."
--Foreword

"Can we just all admit now that Lavie Tidhar's a genius? He's written another brilliant book--a beautiful fever dream that somehow manages to be laugh-out-loud funny, psychedelically weird, and deeply moving."
--Daryl Gregory, award-winning author of Spoonbenders

"To say The Escapement is unique sells it way short. It's part weird western and part quest; half dream and half epic adventure tale set in a memorable Daliesque landscape. Tidhar lets his imagination run wild in this vivid book, all told in spare, beautiful prose."
--Richard Kadrey, bestselling author of the Sandman Slim series

"Comic, tragic, and utterly magnificent--a masterpiece of fantasy. Lavie Tidhar has crafted a wonderfully strange and surreal world in The Escapement, setting a liminal stage for both a gripping adventure and a poignant meditation on grief. I can't wait to read it again"
--Samantha Shannon, author of The Priory of the Orange Tree

5/5 stars "Lavie Tidhar's The Escapement (2021) is a fantastic and fantastical fever dream of a novel, a Weird Western via Lewis Carroll . . . Defying genre, defying categorization, even perhaps defying plot, Tidhar has crafted a baroque hallucinatory tale. you have to let wash over you as much as you read it."
--Fantasy Literature

"Somewhere, in some city, a nameless man attends his dying son's bedside, powerless to save the boy. Desperate to find a cure, he slips into the Escapement: a Western world of maniacal whimsy populated by bounty hunters, stone giants, mimes, and clowns. Here, the ghost of John Wayne Gacy becomes a bloodthirsty giant, and P.T. Barnum is recast as a clown-enslaving general. The man, known in the Escapement as the Stranger, is not alone; most of the people in this weird desert come there from the real world by way of dream, drink, or death. Studded with features like the Big Rock Candy Mountains and the Desert de Soleil, the land bears intimate connections to the dying boy in the hospital bed--a boy who loves the circus and its clowns--and it's here that the Stranger hopes to find his son a panacea: Ur-shanabi, the Plant of Heartbeat. In keeping with its roots in midcentury Westerns, Tidhar's novel casts the Escapement's clowns as Native American analogs, turning the Stranger into their White savior and avenger, a man who knows that 'one should never be unkind to clowns.' The author draws from an eclectic mix of sources to create a dazzling story that is more than the sum of its parts, and much of the fun of reading it comes from recognizing its homages. Knowledgeable readers will notice shades of Stephen King, Lewis Carroll, and Westworld here, and Tidhar himself cites Z. Ariel's fairy tale, "The Heart of the Golden Flower," the Epic of Gilgamesh, Salvador Dalí, tarot cards, and Sergio Leone as particular sources of inspiration. A delightfully cacophonous novel, teeming with character."
--Kirkus

"The Escapement is absorbing, bizarre, haunting, and compelling. Lavie Tidhar continues to shatter the boundaries of literary and genre fiction with a novel that is equal parts horrifying dreamscape and an affecting meditation on parental love. There are a lot of books out there, but this is an experience."
--David Liss, author of The Peculiarities

"Lavie Tidhar is a voice to be reckoned with. With The Escapement, he fearlessly crests the wave of the New New Weird with a wild, decadent hybrid of The Dark Tower and Carnivale. A vivid beach read, if the beach was made of greasepaint and gunpowder."
--Catherynne M. Valente, author of Deathless

"A surreal blend of Barnum and Bailey meets Stephen King's Dark Tower and Sergio Leone's The Good, The Bad and the Ugly . . . The genius of Tidhar, which he has repeatedly demonstrated, is that he can turn these literary and pop culture references into a gripping, moving narrative unlike anything you've read before."
--Locus

"Tidhar has done a brilliant job not just of weaving together a wide variety of myths and stories."
--Rebecca Glazer, author of My Throat is an Open Grave

"These shifts of consciousness between worlds and the drawing of themes and symbols from one reality into another remind me of Iain Banks' The Bridge. But The Escapement is an original masterpiece that is all Tidhar, full of echoes of his earlier stories and novels."
--Sci Fi Mind

"Like nothing else you've read. I'd recommend it entirely on that basis, but it's also beautifully written, thoughtful and deep, and resonant for anyone who's been a parent, or a child."
--Andrew Wheeler, Antic Musings

"[The Escapement] feels like a surrealist cartoon co-written by Dr. Seuss and Ray Bradbury."
--Forward

"This was the weirdest book I think have ever read, and I loved every minute of it."
--Into the Heart Wyld

"5/5 stars. The descriptions are amazing throughout and the clown world is incredibly creative and imaginative. I loved some of the imagery here and never knew what surprise I would find on the next page."
--Hidden in Pages

"Yes, there's a narrative thread to follow throughout the book, but it's only here in order for Tidhar to masterfully weave all sorts of different things together that make the reader's brain explode, or at the very least make readers shake their heads in bewilderment, but, ultimately, wonderment."
--Mt Void

"If you're a fan of bizarre fantasy world, absurdist stories or even magical realism, I think this book is perfect for you . . . The writing is very fluid, beautiful and fever dream-like."
--The Ink Slinger

"Surreal, twisted and unusual but also incredibly intriguing. I think this is one of those books you would get more out of on every read. It's almost begging to be read more than once. And at its very core, I can't help but get Dark Tower vibes from this book. I really enjoyed it!"
--Of Worlds Forgotten

Praise for Lavie Tidhar

On Central Station

John W. Campbell Award Winner / Neukom Literary Arts Award Winner/ Arthur C. Clarke Award Finalist / NPR Best Books / Barnes and Noble Best Science Fiction and Fantasy / Locus Recommended Reading List

"Beautiful, original, a shimmering tapestry of connections and images."
--Alastair Reynolds, author of the Revelation Space series

"A dazzling tale of complicated politics and even more complicated souls. Beautiful."
--Ken Liu, author of The Grace of Kings

[STARRED REVIEW] "Readers of all persuasions will be entranced."
--Publishers Weekly

[STARRED REVIEW] "A fascinating future glimpsed through the lens of a tight-knit community."
--Library Journal