The Etched City
KJ Bishop
Pan Macmillan
Paperback, 467 pages, R103.00
Reviewed by Ian Jamieson, 4 May 2005
A first novel, an exceptional writer, a city of tormented souls and death
and destruction, and we have a book called The Etched
City.
Nowhere in the book is it called science fiction or fantasy except in the
reviews printed on the back, and only one actually calls it "literate,
dark fantasy", which it undoubtedly is.
The first seventy odd pages concern the escape and journey of two very
different people, a healer and an assassin. Reasonably promising, but then the
story stops dead and becomes a series of weird interludes and vignettes, some
quite gruesome and sickening. The main characters have split up and gone their
separate ways - one to kill and maim, and one to try and heal.
This is not a book for most SF and fantasy fans, but rather for those whose
tastes lie in the straight literary fields.
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