Kirjahaku

Drug dealers, hustlers, brothels, dirty politics, corrupt cops . . . and sorcery. Welcome to Low Town. In the forgotten back alleys and flophouses that lie in the shadows of Rigus, the finest city of the Thirteen Lands, you will find Low Town. It is an ugly place, and its cham­pion is an ugly man. Disgraced intelligence agent. Forgotten war hero. Independent drug dealer. After a fall from grace five years ago, a man known as the Warden leads a life of crime, addicted to cheap violence and expensive drugs. Every day is a constant hustle to find new customers and protect his turf from low-life competition like Tancred the Harelip and Ling Chi, the enigmatic crime lord of the heathens. The Warden's life of drugged iniquity is shaken by his dis­covery of a murdered child down a dead-end street . . . set­ting him on a collision course with the life he left behind. As a former agent with Black House--the secret police--he knows better than anyone that murder in Low Town is an everyday thing, the kind of crime that doesn't get investi­gated. To protect his home, he will take part in a dangerous game of deception between underworld bosses and the psy­chotic head of Black House, but the truth is far darker than he imagines. In Low Town, no one can be trusted. Daniel Polansky has crafted a thrilling novel steeped in noir sensibilities and relentless action, and set in an original world of stunning imagination, leading to a gut-wrenching, unforeseeable conclusion. Low Town is an attention-grabbing debut that will leave readers riveted . . . and hun­gry for more.

The Magnificent Seven meets The Wind in the Willows in this action-packed fantasy adventure from Daniel Polansky, The Builders.A missing eye.A broken wing.A stolen country. The last job didn't end well. Years go by, and scars fade, but memories only fester. For the animals of the Captain's company, survival has meant keeping a low profile, building a new life, and trying to forget the war they lost. But now the Captain's whiskers are twitching at the idea of evening the score. PRAISE FOR THE BUILDERS "A living, breathing world of vivid, winsome characters hellbent on their blaze of glory and as unforgiving as a runaway train carrying all your friends over a cliff. I haven't cared about animals this much since Watership Down." -- Delilah S. Dawson, author of Hit and Wicked as They Come "Nobody does dark like Polansky. The Builders is Redwall meets Unforgiven, combining the endearing wit of Disney's Robin Hood with all the grit and violence of a spaghetti western." -- Myke Cole, author of the Shadow Ops series

Hugo Award finalist Daniel Polansky crafts an innovative, mind-bending fantasy mystery in The Seventh Perfection When a woman with perfect memory sets out to solve a riddle, the threads she tugs on could bring a whole city crashing down. The God-King who made her is at risk, and his other servants will do anything to stop her. To become the God-King's Amanuensis, Manet had to master all seven perfections, developing her body and mind to the peak of human performance. She remembers everything that has happened to her, in absolute clarity, a gift that will surely drive her mad. But before she goes, Manet must unravel a secret which threatens not only the carefully prepared myths of the God-King's ascent, but her own identity and the nature of truth itself.

Here, the criminal is king. The streets are filled with the screeching of fish hags, the cries of swindled merchants, the inviting murmurs of working girls. Here, people can disappear, and the lacklustre efforts of the guard ensure they are never found.Warden is an ex-soldier who has seen the worst men have to offer; now a narcotics dealer with a rich, bloody past and a way of inviting danger. You'd struggle to find someone with a soul as dark and troubled as his.But then a missing child, murdered and horribly mutilated, is discovered in an alley. And then another. With a mind as sharp as a blade and an old but powerful friend in the city, he's the only man with a hope of finding the killer.If the killer doesn't find him first.WINNER OF THE PRIX IMAGINALES AWARD FOR BEST FOREIGN NOVEL IN 2012.

Dark, violent, and shot through with corruption, TOMORROW, THE KILLING is a fantastic successor to THE STRAIGHT RAZOR CURE, one of the most heralded fantasy debuts of recent times.Once he was a hero of the Great War, and then a member of the dreaded Black House. Now he is the criminal linchpin of Low Town. His name is Warden. He thought he had left the war behind him, but a summons from up above brings the past sharply, uncomfortably, back into focus. General Montgomery's daughter is missing somewhere in Low Town, searching for clues about her brother's murder. The general wants her found, before the stinking streets can lay claim to her, too.TOMORROW, THE KILLING was chosen as one of the best novels of 2012 by Forbidden Planet, Fantasy Faction, The Founding Fields and A Fantastical Librarian.

Low Town: the worst ghetto in the worst city in the Thirteen Lands. Good only for depravity and death. And Warden, long ago a respected agent in the formidable Black House, is now the most depraved Low Town denizen of them all.As a younger man, Warden carried out more than his fair share of terrible deeds, and never as many as when he worked for the Black House. But Warden's growing older, and the vultures are circling. Low Town is changing, faster than even he can control, and Warden knows that if he doesn't get out soon, he may never get out at all.But Warden must finally reckon with his terrible past if he can ever hope to escape it. A hospital full of lunatics, a conspiracy against the corrupt new king and a ghetto full of thieves and murderers stand between him and his slim hope for the future. And behind them all waits the one person whose betrayal Warden never expected. The one person who left him, broken and bitter, to become the man he is today. The one woman he ever loved. She who waits behind all things.

'Machiavellian clockwork glory' - Mark Lawrence, author of The Broken Empire trilogyThey enslaved humanity three thousand years ago. Tall, strong, perfect, superhuman and near immortal they rule from their glittering palaces in the eternal city in the centre of the world. They are called Those Above by their subjects. They enforce their will with fire and sword. Twenty five years ago mankind mustered an army and rose up against them, only to be slaughtered in a terrible battle. Hope died that day, but hatred survived. Whispers of another revolt are beginning to stir in the hearts of the oppressed: a woman, widowed in the war, who has dedicated her life to revenge; the general, the only man to ever defeat one of Those Above in single combat, summoned forth to raise a new legion; and a boy killer who rises from the gutter to lead an uprising in the capital. Those Above is the first of an extraordinary fantasy epic by the author of the acclaimed Low Town series that will sweep the reader into a wholly alien, wholly recognizable world of rebellion and revenge, of love and of death, of intrigue and pitiless war.

For centuries beyond counting, humanity has served the Others, god-like Eternals who rule from their cloud-capped mountain-city, building a civilization of unimagined beauty and unchecked viciousness.But all that is about to change. Bas Alyates, grizzled general of a thousand battles, has assembled a vast army with which to contend with the might of Those Above. Eudokia, Machiavellian matriarch and the power behind the Empty Throne, travels to the Roost, nominally to play peacemaker - but in fact to inspire the human population toward revolt. Deep in the dark byways of the mountain's lower tiers, the urchin Pyre leads a band of fanatical revolutionaries in acts of terrorism against their inhuman oppressors. Against them, Calla, handmaiden of the Eternals' king, fights desperately to stave off the rising tide of violence which threatens to destroy her beloved city.The story begun in Those Above comes to a stunning conclusion in this unforgettable battle for the hearts and minds of the human race, making The Empty Throne the most exciting epic fantasies of recent times.

The incredible new fantasy from Daniel Polansky, for fans of Jim Butcher, Ben Aaronovitch and Lauren Beukes.

Imagine a city within a city, where monsters walk the street and magic fills the night. This is New York, but not as you know it. This New York is a city of magic and monsters. Where ordinary people live alongside demons and nightmares, completely unaware of them. New York is home to M, a man with a past... and a secret. He knows more about the creatures who call his city home than anyone else in the world. He walks between the two worlds, at home in neither but more than comfortable in both. M is the man the monsters call when things get bad.And things are about to get really, really bad.

The March's End is a multi-generational portal fantasy of strange magics, epic warfare, and deadly intrigue, in which the personality conflicts and toxic struggles of the Harrow family are reflected in the fantasy world they've sworn to protect. The Harrows are a typical suburban family who, since time immemorial, have borne a sacred and terrible charge. In the daylight they are teachers, doctors, bartenders and vagrants, but at night they are the rulers and protectors of the March, a fantastical secondary world populated with animate antiquated toys and sentient lichen, a panorama of the impossible where cities are carried on the backs of giant snails, and thunderstorms can be subdued with song. But beneath this dreamlike exterior lie dark secrets, and for generation after generation the Harrows have defended the March from the perils that wait outside its borders - when they are not consumed in their own bitter internecine quarrels. In the modern day the Harrow clan are composed of Sophia, the High Queen of the March, a brilliant, calculating matriarch, and her three children - noble Constance, visionary, rebellious Mary Ann, and clever, amoral Will. Moving back and forth between their youth, adolescence, and adulthood, we watch as this family fractures, then reconciles in the face of a conflict endangering not only the existence of the March, but of the 'real world' itself. THE MARCH'S END is a book about growing up, in which the familial struggles of the Harrows are threaded through the mythic history of the fantastical land they protect. It is a story of failure and redemption, in which the power of love is tested against forces that seek to break it, and the necessity of each generation to recreate itself is asserted.

Years ago, Tomorrow - a noxious cloud of funky gas - descended on Manhattan, cutting the island off from the rest of the world and mutating the remaining population. Now, survivors exist amid the rubble of modernity, wearing cast-off clothing from generations past, worshipping celebrities from the past as ambivalent gods and communicating through roughly drawn emojis. Manhattan exists in a state of delicate balance between neighbourhoods, with each group protecting themselves with Molotov cocktails and scrap metal spears. But when the first tourist in centuries arrives on the island under mysterious circumstances, the uneasy web tangled between factions is about to unravel… Frantic and full of anarchy, Tomorrow's Children is a high-octane dystopian tale from Hugo Award nominated author Daniel Polansky.