The rich world of The Clockwork Prince meets the political turmoil of The Eyre Affair. As a prodigy in the science of scriptology, Elsa can write new worlds into creation. She lives in one such world called Veldana. When her mother is abducted, Elsa follows her trail into the real world, where she must recruit the help of a secret society of fellow "mad" geniuses who are similarly gifted in powers of mechanics and alchemy. Here, she meets Leo, a mechanist with a smart mouth and a tragic past. With Leo's help, she unveils a political conspiracy with her own family at the center. Her mother's most valuable and secret creation, a scriptology book with the power to edit the real world, is also missing, and Elsa must find it and her mother before her enemies do.