It is 1848 & the British Empire has grown rich exploiting Lilliputian slaves
- the finesse of their working allowing unheard of feats of minature engineering; even Babbages computing device has been made to work. But now the French have formed a regiment of previously peaceful Brobdingnagian giants & invasion looms. In a world where humanity is both smaller & larger than it once was love & hate loom large. Mankind discovers itself at the centre of scale. Lilliptians are twelve times smaller than us but there are those twelve times smaller than them & twelve times smaller again & so on. & the scale of being goes up from Swifts giants also.. . Adam Roberts has written both a rip roaring 19th century adventure a love story & a thought-provoking pre-atomic SF novel about our place in the universe.