Dear god, I can't wait for this.
I started the manuscript of John Meaney's Bone Song last year, but since I wasn't in the running for it, I had to put it down for other work-related things. And since I'm big on buying in your home territory, I've resisted begging a copy off publishing friends in the UK and have been patiently/impatiently waiting for the US edition. February can't come soon enough. And isn't it gorgeous?Also jealous that NethSpace has already read it all. They say "Think Dirty Harry in a city created by the bastard love-child of Jeff VanderMeer and China Mieville. The backdrop of a hardboiled crime plot cleverly disguises stories of human interaction, trust, mistrust, loyalty, morality, acceptance, and love while delivering a great mystery."
From the synopsis: Lieutenant Donal Riordan has been given the most bizarre of new cases. Four famous stage performers have died in recent months, thee of them in state capitals within Transifica, the fourth in far Zurinam. And now the idolised Diva, Maria deLivnova is coming to Tristopolis. Donal's boss is determined that nothing like this is ever to happen in his city. Donal is to have anything he needs as long the Diva lives. And so begins a dark investigation through a world where corpses give up their pyschic energy in the massive necrofulx generators that power the city, where gargoyles talk, where wraiths work in slavery, a world of the dead where corruption is alive. This is an extraordinary SF novel set in alternate universe quite unlike any imagined in SF before; a universe where magic and the supernatural and the undead are given a scientific rationale and horrifyingly plausible rationale. The novel's setting, Tristopolis, is the ultimate noir city; an immense baroque creation of haunted stone skyscrapers, black metal and city-wide catacombs. Its hero Donal Riordan is immensely likeable and easy to identify with. Even once he's dead.
I think this is going to be big.
8 comments:
I just finished the UK edition this last week. It is an excellent book.
I still think Paradox is a better work though.
That does sound pretty cool, and in fact, on looking, the local library has a copy. :)
Great! And I describe my novel and the combination of Mieville and Richard K Morgan. I was hoping to be...new. *sigh* Damn you Meaney! ;)
Al, I haven't read more than the first 40 pages of Bone Song, so I can't compare yet. I will say I think Paradox is utterly landmark. I suspect Bone Song is going to be the book that catapults Meaney to widespread US recognition though.
Tim, John routinely blows my mind.
That one's on the list. Which can now be described as Epic––for its length and my eagerness to slaughter trees in its honor.
To transform them into something more than trees.
Via some mystical process or processes that I may or may not believe (in some preter-anderthal part of my mind) is accomplished by putting mermaids and puppies into a room with tubs of ink and stern, unrelenting robot masters.
That's exactly how it happens. And actually, that's why I prefer hardcovers. I don't mind a tree dying for something lasting and noble. But to pulp one to turn it into a mass-market, which tears up even as you read it... horrors. It's like beef - a cow dying for file mignon seems better than a cow dying for a big mac... Replicators, of course, will liberate both trees and cows.
Hmm. Yes, that's all so true. I might add grapes into wine, only in order to BEG the question of varietals: What authors should be printed on the mighty oak, and which on the knobby fir? Cherry, walnut, and joshua tree...
I submit Phil Dick on Hemp, for its durability and psychoactive properties.
Umm, Ayn Rand or Michener on Sequoia. Count the number of rings on each page.
Scalzi or Gaiman on Birch, for my money. Just because I chew on the raw wood anyway. May as well taste good.
Doctorow on a Data Tree, I suppose that would be obvious.
Thoughts? What with whom? Show your work.
Yeah, I'm jonesin' for this one as well...
Too many books; not enough time.
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