While wandering through the ruins of the abandoned city, a captain happens upon a partially destroyed bookshop. Intrigued, he wanders in, to discover its very arresting, female proprietor. Amongst the literary debris and in the candlelight they begin talking, about books, naturally enough. When the conversation turns to favourite books, she begins her amazing story.
Her grandfather, Count Konstantin was obsessed by riddles and puzzles. Having given up his military career on the death of his son, he set to their pursuit in earnest. His whole castle became an amazing mechanical puzzle and within its walls he collected unique books - often riddles in themselves. One day they happen upon a very intriguing book indeed, the work of one N. Flood of London. Summoning him to his castle in Bohemia, he entrusts him with a very special and challenging task - to create the infinite book with no beginning and no end.

Scarcely has he begun this endeavour, however, than he falls in love with the Count's lovely daughter, Irena. The Count soon finds out and banishes Flood to his dungeons. Flood only escapes following the Count's death when his daughter, Pica comes to rescue him (having herself escaped from the orphanage in which she had been placed). He sets off with her, his printing assistant, and a family of acrobats in the Count's old ship on a voyage around the world in search of this elusive book. But will he at last succeed in this quest, and will he again see his beloved Irena who disappeared shortly after giving birth to Pica?

This is a quite entrancing tale, but I do have a few niggles. In the first place, it is difficult to work out quite how Flood survived his 12 year imprisonment both physically and psychologically given the death of the Count and subsequent fleeing of his staff. Secondly it can feel a little disjointed, and it does seem to lose its momentum once they leave behind the castle walls.

However, these are only little concerns, for in the Salamander, Thomas Wharton has created a magical fairytale for grownups. Told in the third person, it would not have harmed it for it to have begun 'once upon a time'. It is charming and beguiling, beautifully written, laced with much wit and intelligence. ( )

The book that turned me to this author. It is very good. ( )

I need to come back and post a review when I can think of something more coherent than **loves**

Fantastic read. Highly recommended. ( )

It is an infinite book. Stories evolve, devolve, revolve.

The setting seems to be Slovakia, but it is never actually defined as such. I can almost imagine the exact hrad (castle), Oravsky set high above the Orava River. ( )

"Within every book there lies concealed a book of nothing. Don't you sense it when you read a page brimming with words? The vast gulf of emptiness beneath the frail net of letters. The ghostliness of the letters themselves. Giving a semblance of life to things and people who are really nothing. Nothing at all. No, it was the reading that mattered, I eventually understood, not whether the pages were blank or printed. The Mohammedans say an hour or reading is one stolen from paradise." (p. 75-76)