The Glass Sentence: The Mapmakers Trilogy, Book 1

Explores what it means to feel connected to a time and place, plus the power of memories and our connection to them, asking, what's taken from us when they're gone?

Memories are taken from men by force, leaving them physically scarred and shells of their former selves. When Sophia's Uncle Shadrack is kidnapped, he's threatened with the same fate. Much talk of people mentally tortured by faceless creatures called Lachrima, who haunt victims with incessant, horrible crying. A man goes crazy and mutilates a Lachrima in his house. Some running from enemies who carry grappling hooks and shoot guns; one key character gets shot in the leg. A fire is set in a crowded building where people flee for their lives; there's a mention later that three died and one person was murdered. Sophia's parents disappeared when she was very young and were feared dead. There's talk of an event called the Great Disruption, when time periods around the world fractured and many people died, with talk of another such event bringing about the end times. Mentions of Theo's being orphaned, then kidnapped at knifepoint, then caged in a circus. A story about how one character lost his foot to a hungry creature.

"Damned" and "damn."