Hell's Horizon

November 1, 2010
Written before Darren O'Shaughnessy became a bestselling young adult author as Darren Shan, this gory companion to June 2010's Procession of the Dead is a twisting, paranormal gangster mystery. Al "Algiers" Jeery works for the Cardinal, crime boss of the City. When Al's new girlfriend, Nic, is brutally murdered in one of the Cardinal's hotels, the boss asks Al to investigate. Al dutifully starts researching and quickly learns he knew nothing about Nic. Blind Incan priests, Nic's weird friends, and the terrifying assassin Paucar Wami conspire as Al's life unravels along with the mystery. Events occur in parallel to those of Procession of the Dead, but the stories are quite independent. Readers familiar with Shan's teen titles might need to exercise a bit of patience with the pacing, but fans of dark urban fantasy will eagerly look forward toward City of Snakes, the next installment.

October 1, 2010

Second installment in Shan's fantasy urban noir series (Procession of the Dead, 2010) set in an unnamed city ruled by fearsome gangster The Cardinal.

Reformed alcoholic Al Jeery is a loyal and respected but undistinguished member of the Troops, The Cardinal's private army. Seemingly by accident he is called to help remove the corpse of a murdered girl from a swanky hotel. To Al's horror he finds that the stabbed and mutilated body is that of his girlfriend, Nic Hornyak. Then The Cardinal summons Al, berating his lack of ambition despite his talents, and orders him to investigate. Assisted by his policeman buddy, Bill Casey, Al slogs through Nic's sordid sexual and mystical involvements, of which Al knew nothing, and discovers that she was last seen in the company of a man who resembles Paucar Wami, the eerie, elusive assassin who kills as he pleases and owes allegiance to nobody. Strangely, Al also learns that the body of the father he never knew is missing. Then one ghastly night Wami himself shows up, infuriated that Al has been mouthing off about a murder Wami definitely didn't commit. Wami, it emerges, is Al's father and proposes they investigate together. After much graphic, inordinately complicated and sometimes incoherent sleuthing, explanations of a sort finally arrive, but to readers unfamiliar with the previous book they won't mean much.

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December 1, 2010
Shans second book about the City takes place during roughly the same time period as the first (Procession of the Dead, 2010) but features many new characters, only tying together events from both books at the very end of the story. Al Jeery is a dedicated soldier for the Cardinal and happy to do his job until the day he takes a body to the morgue only to discover it is his girlfriend. Asked by the Cardinal to investigate, Al takes on the duty, persevering through a complex and often seemingly impossible investigation. Like Procession of the Dead, this story takes place entirely within Shans fictional yet modern-day city, run by the Cardinal, but the plot is constructed in the fashion of a mainstream police procedural. With almost too many twists to believe, dozens of characters, and the complex mythology of the City itself, Hells Horizon is not an easy read, yet it may appeal to those who enjoyed China Mi'villes The City & the City.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)