Set in our not-so-distant future, award-winning Tricia Sullivan’s new novel is, at one level, an engaging and exciting man-hunt that takes us on a pell-mell race across the world in pursuit of a killer carrying something crucial and frightening in an attache case. There is mystery, there are chases, there are fights (including a heartstopping one in and out of a plane), there is danger. There’s also Sullivan’s startling and often beautiful prose and her ready wit. But this is much more than an SF caper novel.
Our protagonist, Pearl, has extra-dimensional wings that come into being when she’s threatened. She doesn’t have many memories. She may be an angel but she’s not sure. She needs to know not just who she is, but what she is. And her quarry? He’s a killer wearing another man’s body and the case he’s carrying is a door to another universe. There are ideas and concepts here to astound anyone and in the hands of a less expert author it would be all too easy for them to spin the novel out of control but Sullivan keeps the reader locked in to her roller-coaster plot. Key to this is Pearl who, wings notwithstanding, is utterly ordinary and believable; a beautifully developed, intelligent, sometimes scared, usually resourceful and fiercely spirited heroine. Sullivan can bring fans of Lauren Beukes and Richard Morgan alike along for these thrills and surreal ideas. ~ Simon Spanton
Maxim Jakubowski's view...
Pearl is an angel and works for the Resistance. But, in truth, she doesn’t really know who she is and what she is working towards. The organisation is an occult group attempting to change the world in small, invisible ways and Pearl begins to question their motivation and methods. As if her confusion and troubled dreams of flight and fall and apocalypse weren’t enough, she is on a mission to seek out a killer who is wearing another man’s body, and constantly switches between personas, who carries and protects a mysterious suitcase which might actually be a key to the secrets of the universe as well as being a lethal weapon or a means of salvation. No wonder Pearl is mixed-up. Conspiracies galore, questions about the nature of identity, brilliant evocative writing never detract from the unceasing pace of Sullivan’s, a past Arthur C. Clarke Ward winner, futuristic fantasy thriller. Heralds a major new series. ~ Maxim Jakubowski
| Primary Genre | Science Fiction |
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