The Howler

Hour of the Wolf (Lithuanian: Vilko valanda) is a steampunk novel written by Andrius Tapinas. It was released in February 2013 in Lithuania as a hardcover book. Hour of the Wolf was the first steampunk book written in Lithuanian and spent 20 weeks in the Top 10 of the best-selling fiction books in Lithuania. The novel was swiftly translated to English and was released on Amazon as e-book on September 3, 2013. The first of a young adult fiction tetralogy, it is set in an alternative version of the beginning of the 20th century in Vilnius, Lithuania and other cities across Europe. The powerful family of bankers, the Rothchilds, has created the Alliance of Free Cities, where alchemists pilot steampunk airships over great cities, hard working mechanics create automatons and deep in the dungeons secret societies of macabre wizards strive to create artificial intelligence. The main character is a former US Marine Antanas Sidabras, legate of the Free City of Vilnius, whose investigation of, at first look, just another murder turns out to be a complex web of political intrigue, and he has everybody against him – mad doctors, corrupt officials, Russian agents and monsters from his personal nightmares. A sequel, Day of the Plague, has been published in Lithuania.