The First Threshold War

What if the First World War was never an accident?

Vienna, 1898. Empress Elisabeth of Austria is assassinated, and the grief-shattered Emperor Franz Josef makes a desperate bargain with the most dangerous man in Europe: Grigori Rasputin.

The price of that bargain will be paid in blood, lightning, and the souls of millions.

In this sweeping alternate history, Rasputin's ambitions reach far beyond the Russian court. With the unlimited resources of the Habsburg Empire behind him and the reluctant genius of Nikola Tesla pressed into service, he builds an arsenal unlike anything the world has ever seen, and prepares to resurrect something that should never return.

The First Threshold War reimagines the cataclysm of 1914 as a war fought not only with steel and gas, but with Tesla's terrible machines and forces far older than any empire. At its heart is a triangle of brilliance, madness, and complicity: a mystic who sees exactly where history is going, an emperor too broken by grief to ask what he has done, and an inventor who builds wonders without asking what they will be used for.

For fans of Harry Turtledove, Susanna Clarke, and the darker corners of alternate history fiction.