The Folly of the World

"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. If they work together they may find reward beyond reckoning, but such promise is no guarantee against betrayals born of greed, rage, and lust. In a topsy-turvey world where peasants feast while noblemen starve, these three uneasy confederates will learn that theft, fraud, and even murder are simply part of politics as usual in the island-city of Dordrecht, and even if their scheme succeeds they may not live long enough to enjoy it.."--