Forty-four

A mysterious and elegant young woman, Eliza Zmievska, embarks on a long and dangerous journey by sea, land, and through parallel worlds to the steampunk London of the 1840s to fulfill a task assigned by the Polish underground: to shoot the traitor, inventor, and billionaire Konrad Zaluski, a designer of unusual gadgets and flying machines that use vacuum energy. She is accompanied on this dizzying journey by the tetygon Xa'ru and the living severed head of British scientist Thomas Mitchell. This trio will have to confront all evil with all their meticulousness, courage, and sacrifice, especially its concentrated embodiment - the vile Russian Empire, which is ready to destroy all of humanity for its own dirty purposes.

The novel takes place in 1844 in an alternative reality in which humanity has discovered the possibilities of the ether. The work features many creatures from Slavic mythology (obviously, the author is well versed in it). The genre is steampunk, or rather etherpunk, since in the presented world the characters use not steam, but the power of vacuum energy, which is called ether in the novel.

The book was published in 2016, and in 2017 it won the most important Polish literary awards in the field of fantasy: the Jerzy Żuławski and Janusz Seidl literary awards.