Recommendations from our site
“This is a very fucking weird book. It’s set in an alternate interwar period. It’s an analogy to Weimar, so think of Berlin in the ’20s. War is on the horizon. The city is full of mutilated veterans, many of whom, for complex reasons related to chemical weapons, have lost some or all of their face and go about wearing tin prostheses. The city is moving from a loose post-war liberalism into a drums-of-war-beating authoritarianism. It’s a murder story about a guy who is a down-and-outer, who ends up trying to investigate a murder because he is part of the underclass to whom no one in the temporal authorities wants to pay attention…His noir is pretty goddamn noir. It’s not leavened with the humor of Steve Brust. Think of a Tom Waits album that’s been dragged through the gutter, and now it skips over and over again on Tom Waits growling. That’s where we’re at with Kadrey. It’s a stunning read; it’s beautifully plotted. The setting is amazing, and it’s got some great twists.” Read more...
Cory Doctorow, Novelist
