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.
