Serpents and Stairways
  • Reads 64,745
  • Votes 5,059
  • Parts 41
  • Time 9h 39m
  • Reads 64,745
  • Votes 5,059
  • Parts 41
  • Time 9h 39m
Ongoing, First published Sep 04, 2023
The fairytale formula is simple-it takes a hero, one that's brave and cunning, a magical assistant to aid them, a worthy adversary, and on the other side of fall and triumph they reach the happy-ever-after. Dinah, being a philology graduate, is a master of fairytales. She's read them all cover to cover, and she's lived through enough of them, from boarding school to boarding school, to recognise a plot when she hears one. 

So, who'd make a better consultant when a dragon, the maiden-stealing kind, is spotted in the skies of Alps? For a dragon is never slain by might. One must be outwitted, its weakness-exposed, its secrets-discovered, and its story-learned. In company of her mechanical knight, Servantes, she takes the dirigible from Paris to the enchanted skyscrapers of Silen, knowing that beyond that dragon, if she's cunning and brave, awaits her own Fate.

The year is 1914. The month is May.



Tags: adventure, alternatehistory, aristocracy, automaton, darkacademia, dragons, edwardian, empire, europe, fairytale, fantasy, femaleprotagonist, friendship, historicalfiction, history, magic, magicalrealism, mystery, newadult, original, prince, revolution, steampunk, victorian
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