Mark Charan Newton

I’ve had quite a few questions about this, so in case anyone’s wondering what the book is about, here’s a summary (and to be read in a deep Hollywood voice, please):

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An ice age comes to a chain of islands.

Villjamur: a city of ancient spires and bridges, where banshees declare the dead. You can see dodgy magic from hidden alleyways where cultists use ancient technology for their own spurious gain. Refugees seeking sanctuary from the weather find the gates closed, and the city’s councilors are the last people you should listen too about the matter. Sometimes you might hear a little jazz from certain quarters. A little further out, the dead are seen shambling across the tundra. Into the city comes a young woman to claim the throne of the Jamur Empire after her father commits suicide. Around her, politicians hover. There are garudas. There are hominid species, the rumel, a tough-skin cousin of man that can live for hundreds of years.

Meanwhile an officer in the city inquisition must solve a high-profile and savage murder of a city politician, whilst battling within his own private and work life. A cocky womanizer cheats his way into the Imperial Residence with a hidden agenda. A once-immortal man, preoccupied with the notion of death, sets a chain of events to unsettle the fabric of this world.

A group of elite soldiers are sent to investigate a bizarre genocide on the northern fringe of the Empire. And in this land under a red sun, it seems the bad weather and ice sheets are bringing more than just snow…

Everyone’s stories are linked, and they all have secrets.

Trust no one in Villjamur.

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One of the major themes is death and decay, especially our unwillingness to acknowledge the one inevitable thing about life. I was also a little confused at the concept of immortality, because if you can’t die, you can’t be alive.

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Some might even say it’s a dying earth fantasy, but you didn’t hear that from me, right? Well okay, you did. And yes it is. It’s an excellent vehicle to play with the above concepts of death and decay: it’s the dying Earth.

Maybe even a noir fantasy. Noir in the sense of crime noir and film noir, not merely ‘dark’, which I think can be a misleading use of the word in fiction. Although it is certainly dark. I wanted to bend genres around each other, fantasy, crime, horror, even elements of mainstream fiction (there, I said it.) Noir in the sense of the dense characters, the subtleness, the erotic, and the strange.

Influences for this include: M John Harrison (especially Viriconium, truly the first noir fantasy), Don DeLillo (whose prose style I adore), Steven Erikson, Henning Mankell (Swedish crime writer), and Jonathan Lethem. I suppose China Miéville’s work haunts much of what I do, although I’ve purposely steered from the baroque, because you can’t baroque and noir at the same time. And in small doses, Gene Wolfe’s work is there in the text, too.

More explanation? Well I wanted to write the book I wanted to read. With characters that are human with all our weaknesses and problems and complications, not merely morally ambiguous, something that happens on a basic level anyway, characters that aren’t characatures. Gritty? Well that’s a cliché these days. I wanted to write something that works on the level of the prose and below the surface, although to make the surface zing! With themes. With plot. To put some new respect into a genre I love. I’ve no idea if I’ve succeeded, or if it’s any good. I’m stupidly self-depreciating when it comes to writing.

Someone bought it, which is a start.

If you ask me this question when I’m drunk, the answer is likely to be far more elaborate, even more boring, and possibly you may walk away with me staring fondly into space.

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