sentences:  The book is written in the first person from the point of view of unreliable narrator Maxim Arturovitch Pyatnitski, whose posthumous notes Moorcock claims to have transcribed.Pyat, as he is also known, describes in the novel his adventures in Tsarist then Revolutionary Russia.Born on 1 January 1900 in Kiev, Pyat dreams from early on of becoming a great inventor and engineer.