The Final Alchemy: A novel of Murder, Magic and the Search for the Northwest Passage

An old man sits by the dying embers of a fire in London of 1669. The ghosts of the past surround him and a decades old guilt weighs him down. As a young man, Robert Bylot did it all: journeyed to the magical Spice Islands on a quest for the alchemist John Dee, communicated with angels through Crystallomancy, and searched for the fabled Northwest Passage with Henry Hudson. He has survived plague, mutiny and fire, and found happiness with an extraordinary woman, but nothing has assuage the ancient guilt that tortures him—unless the old, stained book on his lap contains the answer. The book might be his salvation, or his damnation. Through Bylot's memories and the words written in the book he holds, The Final Alchemy recreates a world at the tipping point between the mysticism of the Middle Ages and the rationality of the Renaissance. The possibilities for glory and profit appear limitless, but the risks are horrifying. At the centre of this world stand two men: Dr. John Dee, alchemist, magus, mathematician, advisor to kings and queens, and believer that England is destined to recreate an empire descended from ancient Troy; and Thomas Smythe, founder of the East India Company, and believer that future empires must be based solely on commerce. Both base their murky plans on fragments of an ancient map, a portolan, that seems to show the unknown parts of the globe in stunning and impossible detail. The conflicting machinations of these two men and the promise of the portolan ensnare Hudson and Bylot in a complex web of intrigue, ambition and betrayal that offers fame or destruction.