The Folly of the World

A flooded town in medieval Holland holds riches for an unusual trio in this darkly humorous adventure by the author of The Enterprise of Death.

“Every page is saturated with wickedness and mischief. Bullington’s fans will be happy to see him bring his trademark dark humor, gritty detail, and loopy characters into a new gruesome landscape.” —Publishers Weekly

On a stormy night in 1421, the North Sea delivers a devastating blow to Holland: the Saint Elizabeth Flood, a deluge of biblical proportions that drowns hundreds of towns, thousands of people, and forever alters the geography of the Low Countries. Where the factions of the noble Hooks and the merchant Cods waged a literal class war but weeks before, there is now only a nigh-endless expanse of grey water, a desolate inland sea with moldering church spires jutting up like sunken tombstones. For a land already beleaguered by generations of civil war, a worse disaster could scarce be imagined.

Yet even disaster can be profitable, for the right sort of individual, and into this flooded realm sail three conspirators: a deranged thug at the edge of madness, a ruthless conman on the cusp of fortune, and a half-feral girl balanced between them.

With The Folly of the World, Jesse Bullington has woven an extraordinary new tale of the depraved and the desperate.

“Smart, funny, and full of wild exuberance.” ?Lauren Beukes

“The Folly of the World is . . . weaved with masterful wordplay and dark humor. Bullington has perfected his voice in this novel. . . . He was scary good before, and he just keeps getting better.” —Fantasy Literature

“[An] absorbing cross—genre piece. . . . This dark and memorable novel, complete with its dark and memorable characters, is among the more distinctive and classifiable reads around.” —The Bookbag