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Low Town
384 pages
A gritty, hardboiled descent into the magical slums where a disgraced hero navigates a labyrinth of corruption and cheap violence.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like stepping into a rain-slicked, shadow-drenched alleyway where every shadow hides a knife. It is a masterclass in fantasy noir, blending the cynical, hardboiled voice of classic detective fiction with the brutal realities of a grimdark magical metropolis. The narrative moves at a brisk, relentless clip, dragging you through a grimy underworld of drug dens, corrupt officials, and desperate corner boys. The prose is sharp and punchy, dripping with world-weary observations that perfectly capture the protagonist's moral decay. It is an unapologetically bleak experience, steeped in the impossibility of redemption and the heavy toll of past sins. Fans of morally gray antiheroes and oppressive, atmospheric world-building will devour this gritty, uncompromising tale.
- Mood
- grimy
- shadow-drenched
- oppressive
- bleak
- Tone
- cynical
- hardboiled
- world-weary
- wry
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- impossibility of redemption · systemic corruption · weight of past sins · moral ambiguity · urban decay
- The writing
- Sharp, punchy, and dripping with hardboiled cynicism, the prose reads like a classic noir detective novel transplanted into a grim fantasy metropolis.
- The arc
- The protagonist moves from cynical, drug-numbed detachment to a reluctant, desperate pursuit of justice that ultimately forces him to confront the darkest parts of his own nature.
- Who it's for
- Readers who crave morally bankrupt protagonists, gritty urban fantasy, and the bleak, rain-slicked atmosphere of classic noir.
Content notes
- graphic violence
- drug addiction and use
- child death
- gore
- profanity
About the book
Rigus is the greatest city in the Thirteen Lands, a glittering metropolis of crystalline citadels and sumptuous manors, where gentlewomen hide delicate smiles behind silken sleeves and bored nobles settle affairs of honor with cold steel. But light casts shadow, and in the darkness of the spires the baseborn struggle, eeking out an existence amidst the cast-offs of their betters. This is Low Town, a sprawling warren of side streets and back alleys, of boarded up windows and false storefronts. Here the corner boys do a steady trade to the dead eyed and despairing, and a life can be bought with a clipped copper penny.
Low Town is an ugly place, and its champion is an ugly man. A former war hero and intelligence agent, now a crime lord addicted to cheap violence and expensive narcotics, the Warden spends his days hustling for customers and protecting his turf, until the chance discovery of a murdered child sets him on a collision course with the life he'd left behind. As bodies bloat in the canal and winter buries the city, he plays a desperate game of deception, pitting the underworld powers against his former colleagues in the secret police, hoping to find the source of the evil before it consumes him, and perhaps the city itself.
But virtue is rarely repaid in kind, and Low Town is no place for the righteous.
In the tradition of Dashiell Hammett, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Quentin Tarantino comes LOW TOWN, a novel about the taint of blood, and the impossibility of redemption.
LOW TOWN will be published in the US and Canada by Doubleday on August 16, 2011.
The same book will be published simultaneously in the UK and Commonwealth by Hodder & Stoughton under a different title, THE STRAIGHT RAZOR CURE.
Translations are also forthcoming in the following languages, with the respective publishers in parenthesis: German (Piper) French (Bragelonne) Spanish (Planeta/Ediciones Minotauro) Croatian (Znanje) Polish (Papierowy Ksiezyc) Italian (Fanucci Editore) Czech (Euromedia) Russian (Eksmo)
Description from Open Library.
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