Next year, readers will finally be able to read No Man’s Land, a new novel from Richard (K.) Morgan — the author of, among others, Altered Carbon. I’ve been a fan of the author’s work ever since Altered Carbon appeared on the shelf in my local bookstore in 2002 (probably the Waterstones in Durham or Cambridge).
Thus far, I’ve very much enjoyed his science fiction novels (the Takeshi Kovacs series and stand-alones) more than his fantasy work (A Land Fit for Heroes series). This new novel looks like it’ll offer something a little different; and, despite the fact that it features the fae (which I’ve found uninteresting in pretty every iteration I’ve read), I find myself very intrigued by the premise and setting:
The Great War was supposed to be the war to end all wars — and maybe it would have been, had an even greater, otherworldly foe not risen to extinguish the conflict. Overnight, as guns blazed in France and Flanders, village after village in the quiet British countryside was swallowed by the Forest. And within the Forest lurk the Huldu — an ancient fae race, monstrous in their inhumanity, who have decided that mankind’s ascendency over the world can endure no longer.
Enter Duncan Silver. Scarred by the war, fueled by a rage deeper than the trenches in which he once fought, Duncan is determined to show the Huldu that the world is not theirs for the taking. Armed with a deadly iron knife and a cut-down trench gun filled with iron shot, Duncan will stop at nothing to return the children the Huldu have stolen to the arms of their families. No matter how many Huldu he may have to slaughter along the way.
But when he is hired by a mother to return her four-year-old daughter, Miriam — taken by the Huldu six months past and replaced with a changeling — all hell breaks loose. Miriam is a pawn in a much bigger game for dominance than Duncan ever expected, and several long-buried secrets from his past are about to be violently resurrected.
Richard K. Morgan’s No Man’s Land is due to be published by Del Rey in North America and Gollancz in the UK, on March 24th.
Civilian Reader 