The Last Smile in Sunder City
Book One in the Fetch Phillips Archives: a fantasy set in a world where the magic has disappeared...
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4.0 • 61 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
I'm Fetch Phillips, just like it says on the window. There are three things you should know before you hire me:
1. Sobriety costs extra.
2. My services are confidential.
3. I don't work for humans.
It's nothing personal - I'm human myself. But after what happened, it's not the humans who need my help.
I just want one real case. One chance to do something good. Because it's my fault the magic is never coming back.
The Last Smile in Sunder City is the debut novel from actor Luke Arnold - known for his lead role in Black Sails. This contemporary fantasy introduces Fetch Phillips - a character destined to be loved by readers of Ben Aaronovitch, Jim Butcher and Terry Pratchett's Discworld.
'Sunder City [is] an evocative creation, it has echoes of Ankh-Morpork, but also a broken melancholy all of its own'
SFX
'Verve and charm in abundance'
Andrew Caldecott, author of Rotherweird
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Australian actor Luke Arnold, who has played both Long John Silver and Michael Hutchence, makes a cracking fiction debut with this brisk, affable urban fantasy. It’s the first in a series of books starring Fetch Phillips, a hard-drinking private detective armed with brass knuckles and a surprising moral compass. Opening with Fetch contemplating mortality due to a lack of coffee, The Last Smile in Sunder City immediately embarks on playful world-building in a bustling realm that until recently ran thick with magic. Bursting with colourful wit, Arnold gradually expands on the real reason for his hero’s comic desperation.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Actor Arnold, best-known for his role in the TV series Black Sails, invites readers into a richly imagined world in this standout debut. In the wake of a cataclysmic war, mystical beings have been stripped of their powers and their magical technologies frozen, leading to mass bankruptcy among gremlins, goblins, elves, and others, and lingering tensions between humans and nonhumans. Human Fetch Phillips, self-described "Man for Hire," lives in Sunder City, a metropolis that began as "one giant factory," before an enlightened dwarf governor allied with a human aristocrat to raise taxes and introduce arts and culture into the community. When Edmund Rye, a centuries-old vampire and one of the teachers at an academy for magical children, disappears, the academy's principal hires Phillips to find him. Phillips hits the mean streets of Sunder City in search of Rye only to realize that he's on the trail of something far more complicated. Winningly combining the grit of Chinatown with the quirky charm of Harry Potter, this series opener is sure to have readers coming back for more.
Customer Reviews
Go Fetch
I loved every word. If self loathing protagonists down on their luck, and worse, aren’t your thing you probably won’t enjoy this. But if they are, you’re in for a treat. Lucky for me I adore a miserable lad. It’s a wonderful look at a world that once knew magic, and now has to move on without it. I know of Black Sails but I haven’t seen it, so I wasn’t coming into this as a fan of Luke Arnold. Either way it didn’t matter because it was awesome, the connection of the title with the book itself is a beautiful gut punch, and now I’m running off to read the second.
Very enjoyable read
I’m so glad I took a chance to read this book, the reviews were not so great. Now I feel they must’ve missed something. This story is well told and brings a good sense of reality and humour to the fantasy genre. Now I want more.
Protagonist offers nothing
I very rarely DNF something, but I couldn’t waste anymore time on this story. I read about 60% of the book to give it a decent go, but the protagonist offers absolutely zero redeeming, or even interesting, traits, and the storyline was much the same. He’s like a wannabe Harry Dresden without any of the good parts of Harry Dresden, and in their place there is a self-aggrandised pity party.