Relics
A Relics Novel
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4.5 • 4 Ratings
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
New York Times–bestselling author: This richly imagined urban fantasy novel set in London’s supernatural black market reads like a cross between Clive Barker and Anne Rice
There’s an underground black market for arcane things. Akin to the trade in rhino horns or tigers’ bones, this network traffics in remains of gryphons, faeries, goblins, and other fantastic creatures.
When her fiancé Vince goes missing Angela Gough, an American criminology student, discovers that he was a part of this secretive trade. It's a big-money business—shadowy, brutal, and sometimes fatal. As the trail leads her deeper into London's dark side, she crosses paths with a crime lord whose life is dedicated to collecting such relics.
Then Angela discovers that some of these objects aren't as ancient as they seem. Some of them are fresh.
Dripping with supernatural terror, Relics launches a new trilogy by the New York Times–bestselling author of Coldbrook, The Silence, and the Alien-Predator Rage War series.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Fans of Lebbon (The Silence) will know to expect supernatural horror, but here it's delivered only to those willing to wait. Little distinguishes the opening from a mid-1970s Updike novel. Angela and Vince are an ordinary couple in suburban London. She's from Boston (or so the narrative claims, unconvincingly) and working on a doctorate in criminology; he's in real estate. Angela's none too clear on Vince's exact job, and she gets a lot less certain when Vince goes AWOL and his purported bosses shrug. Putting her true-crime reading to use, she tracks him through the city's shadows while a battered Vince grapples with mysterious captors. It's difficult to say which audience this book is intended for. Horror aficionados must be patient with the lengthy setup before the threats take form, and fans of character-driven storytelling are confronted with clich s: a woman who says no to sex even when she's interested, just because; the man who says he loves her but jumps in bed with a beautiful stranger, just because. Lebbon's visual imagination is good, and his experience with movie novelizations is amply evident, but his subject matter could stand to be refreshed.
