The Grand Dark
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3.9 • 7 Ratings
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
‘The Great War was over, but everyone knew another war was coming and it drove the city a little mad’
Raised on the streets of Lower Proszawa, Largo makes his living as a cycle courier in a vast, decadent metropolis. With a dazzling girlfriend and a chance of promotion, he avoids politics and delivers without question.
While Lower Proszawa’s citizens seek oblivion in sex and drugs, secret police stalk its streets, strange beasts and intelligent machines emerge from its factories, and the powerful prepare for war. Soon, as the dark forces driving the city threaten everything he loves, Largo must confront them and fight to uncover their deepest secrets.
From New York Times bestseller Richard Kadrey, The Grand Dark is a subversive fantasy of survival and defiance in a world sleepwalking toward disaster.
Reviews
‘A fun and terrifying ride, gritty and relentless, burning with true love and revolutionary fervor’
Cory Doctorow, bestselling author of LITTLE BROTHER
‘The very best science-fiction and fantasy is often set somewhere else, during another time, while still also very much being about the here and the now, and The Grand Dark continues that essential tradition. Kadrey has written for us a beautiful nightmare — one that’s often eerily familiar — showing a theatrical world set on the edge of war, and losing itself in the shadows of brutality and oppression’
Chuck Wendig, bestselling author of WANDERERS
‘Stunning. The hard, spare, considered voice that's driven Kadrey's gonzo supernatural noir has been honed to a deft Kafka-esque edge. Unsettling and dreamlike, seductive and bleak, the jaws of The Grand Dark gape to devour you’
Max Gladstone
‘Artisanal gene mod and robots and coal dust and a big middle finger to the oligarchs, plus bicycles!’
Kevin Hearne
‘Wildly ambitious and inventive fantasy’
KIRKUS
About the author
Richard Kadrey is the New York Times bestselling author of the Sandman Slim supernatural noir books. Sandman Slim was included in Amazon’s ‘100 Science Fiction & Fantasy Books to Read in a Lifetime’, and is in development as a feature film. His other books include Hollywood Dead, The Everything Box, Metrophage, and Butcher Bird, and he also writes comics and screenplays. He lives in San Francisco.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this complex standalone, Kadrey (the Sandman Slim series) introduces a sooty world where a Great War is newly won but unrest, hedonism, and the certainty of a new war to come are driving people "a little mad." Largo Moorden only wants to advance in his courier job and make a life with his girlfriend, Remy, a rising actress at the Grand Dark Theater. But he inadvertently attracts the notice of his city's puppet masters, who pull him into intrigues that are both feeding and fighting a rising tide of doom. Kadrey's initial slow pace lulls readers into a false belief that the obvious dangers of Largo's life are the only ones. When the hammer crashes on Largo and Remy, it comes from plot elements assembled with such devious cunning that they seem obvious only after Largo is trapped. A constant underlying tension makes the city's powder-keg agitation visceral, and the individual neighborhoods and their residents are well wrought. Any fan of convoluted science fiction will appreciate the sharp twists Largo has to navigate if he and those he loves are going to survive.
