Florilegium

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Florilegium is a historical fantasy set in Regency London, where history, art and magic intersect. Talented artist, Diana Banks-Morton possesses an unusual inheritance: the journals of her great-aunt Sarah Sophia Banks, sister of the celebrated botanist and explorer Sir Joseph Banks. A key hidden within their pages leads Diana to membership of the Florilegium, a clandestine society whose members use scent, pigment, botanical knowledge and arcane arts to preserve, conceal, or suppress artefacts capable of altering historical trajectories. Her work there brings her into partnership with Marcus Fox' Rochester, whose considerable talents lie in aroma detection and anything to do with springs, cogs and wheels. Blending historical figures and events with invention, Florilegium explores custodianship, hidden knowledge, and the uncertain boundary between preserving history and shaping it.

—Flora Qian.Winner of the Proverse Prize 2022 (South of the Yangtze)

"Solomon gives FLORILEGIUM an authoritative picture that clearly belongs to time and place, [then] undercuts it, seducing her readership into a world of danger, magic, fantasy, intrigue and romance. The Florilegium is not simply a superb collection of botanical drawings, it is a community of individuals who have discovered extraordinary powers in themselves, enchanters who are petalwrights, aromancers. verbenes, or illustrae. They overcome limits of space and time, jump in and out of London Real Time, and create portals which allow themselves and readers into highly complex spheres that exist beyond the quotidian If characters in fantasy fiction are not entirely believable, the project fails: Solomon's protagonists, Diana and Marcus, are superbly drawn.”

—Professor George Watt, Winner of the Proverse Prize 2020 (The Finley Confession)