Dafydd ap Rhys, Victorian adventurer and unnaturalist, is cursed on multiple levels. Years earlier, while exploring a Faerie realm, he somehow fell victim to a magical curse that dooms him to stay forever awake, the only antidote being the thorns of a particular rose that carries with it a fairy tale sleeping curse, with which he must prick his fingers nightly to sleep and thus survive, but remain constantly bound to London where the rose grows, despite how much his heart yearns to roam free. When this crucial flower is stolen by a cunning enemy, however, he and his flamboyant and devoted companion, Eli Burghley, the Godson of Despair, must venture off on a quest to retrieve it before the lack of sleep causes him to descend into waking hallucinations, madness, and death.
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