Death warrants, sewer rebellions, and a decaying gothic city where every hero has a villain's shadow. Reviewers have called Craig Hallam's gothic steampunk 'Gormenghast on the river Ankh.' A Hero murdered. A Girl alone. A city of Villains. Gothic spires battle for height, overlapping until the skyline is a jagged mass of thorns. From the crumbling Belfry to the Citadel's stained-glass eye, across acres of cobbled streets and knotted alleyways that never see daylight, Greaveburn is a city with darkness at its core. Archduke Choler sits on the throne, his black-sealed letters foretelling death for the person named inside. Abrasia, the rightful heir, lives as a recluse in order to stay alive. Under the cobbled streets dwell the Broken Folk, rebels forced into the dark by a city that chose order over justice. Their leader, Darrant, once stood as Greaveburn's protector, until the city left him scarred and discarded. And in a darkened laboratory, the devious Professor Loosestrife builds a contraption known only as The Womb. As Greaveburn is torn apart around her, Abrasia must avenge her father's murder before the Archduke's letter spells her doom. ----- From international bestselling author Craig Hallam, for readers of Mervyn Peake and Joe Abercrombie who want gothic scale without slow pacing. Hallam builds a world where the throne is held in a bloody fist, the sewers house the palace's lost moral, and every character carries just enough villain to make their heroism cost something. Dark, macabre, occasionally funny... and never quite what you expect. "A richly-textured and suitably macabre gothic fantasy fit for this cynical age." - Mark Cantrell, Cheshire Today "This generation's Gormenghast, but with a sleek, action-packed narrative." - J.S. Collyer, author "It is strange, but it is beautifully strange. It's grim but gorgeously so." - Mark Hayes, The Passing Place "A pacey creation full of surprises, a touch macabre and thoroughly unpredictable." - Nimue Brown, author of Hopeless, Maine