Then there is Jack, an orphan snatched from the streets by a fire-worshipping religious order and imprisoned in Barbotin, a workhouse inspired by a Dickensian nightmare. He seizes the chance to be swept up by the white bird's flight and escapes, eventually joining a street gang of similarly "lost" boys.

Arjun, a musician from a monk-like order whose god "the Voice" will say no more, has fled his home far to the south of Ararat in the hopes that he will find his mute god somewhere among Ararat's many. His facility with ancient languages attracts the attention of Holbach, a scientist seeking to temper the frenzied faiths of Ararat through spreading a naturalistic understanding of the city's spirits in a new (hopefully) uncensored edition of the Atlas. But even his empirical revolution has its limits, as in the mythical Mountain at the border of the city. "The streets fold in on you, up there, and you end up lost in strange places. You can meet mirror-selves, strange new versions of yourself in foreign streets, and you get confused or stolen, and never come back."

The lack of a central protagonist contributes to the Borgesian style of the novel. Instead of advancing in a linear progression, the plot circles. But the tension never stalls. Gilman's attention to detail (his city's buildings shrug like the burly shoulders of a giant), his refusal to indulge in cliché (Arlandes, for example, does not fulfill a suggestive Byronic stereotype), and his genuine interest in his characters lives ensures that the novel never collapses under its own portentous weight. Somehow, though it is cobbled together from a dozen different influences, it feels completely fresh and original. With its gaslights, flying ships, proto-Industrial Age factories, and petty parliaments, Ararat is distinctively steampunk. Its macro-story, the battle between tradition in the form of the chthonic city gods and modernity in the form of Holbach's band of scientists and humanists, is reminiscent of Paula Volsky's reimagining of revolutionary France in Illusion. Others have spotted the outlines of Viriconium and Ambergris in Gilman's city, but it shares a mad Zeitgeist with Bishop's The Etched City, a fondness for child rebels with Stroud's Bartimaeus trilogy, and the pantheistic fatalism of MacLeod's The Light Ages. At times, Thunderer reads like a pastiche of the past 500 years of Western Civilization, written in the dissonant, beautiful music of intersecting, aimless lives.

The story is not without its lulls. Ararat is prone to riots, mob fights, and battle scenes that grow repetitive and uninspired. A couple times Gilman hides the deus ex machina in his deus ex urbis. The late middle of the story lingers, like a guest with no where to go. And, in a purely subjective, personal complaint -- the story begins as a triptych with Arjun, Jack, and Arlandes but then teasingly abandons the charismatic officer.

But these are mere quibbles. The novel's ending satisfyingly eschews a neat-and-tidy conclusion for a realistic culmination of events, in the manner of actual history. And Gilman has already produced a sequel, Gears of the City, which I look forward to reading with no preconceptions of what to expect. In the past few years, only a handful of works have appeared of such impressive construction and irresistible force as to merit designation as instant classics of the genre: for its booming entrance and bold execution, Thunderer deserves a wide audience and an enthusiastic round of applause.