London 1759 and Jack's life is easy. A scholar at Westminster School, a master with cricket bat or billiard cue, the leader of a gang of bucks about the Town, he has both a girl he worships...and a courtesan teaching him the more basic arts of love. Yet he plans to give up all carousing, sit the examinations for Cambridge, find a career in any field he chooses. If he can just stay out of trouble for one night...From the billiard halls and brothels of London to a clash of Empires on the Plains of Abraham, Jack life is forever altered by the tragedies of that night. Through duels, battles, frantic escapes and a brutal winter spent in a cave in Canada, Jack learns the truth of his father's words...as well as a dozen things to do with a dead bear. A year on, the schoolboy will vanish, a man appear. But first he must learn to kill. To come of age, Jack Absolute must be blooded.