Black Blood

January 26, 2009
Meaney’s ambitious sequel to 2008’s Bone Song
makes a successful and welcome shift from ambience and world-building to character and plot development. The gloomy city of Tristopolis is powered by necrofusion, energy produced from incinerating the physical and spiritual remains of the dead. Donal Riordan, a recently murdered Tristopolis police lieutenant now a zombie, is tasked with exposing a powerful cabal of conspirators known as the Black Circle while also trying to track down those responsible for the death of his lover, Laura. As a movement to strip the undead of human rights gains in popularity, the heroic Riordan suddenly finds himself a prime target for a fearful public. The politics and police procedure mix well with a virtual deluge of macabre imagery and symbolism to create a fast-moving and satisfying noir gothic fantasy.

March 15, 2009
Brought back from the dead and fitted with his dead lover's heart, police lieutenant Donal Riordan has the duty of finding the man who killed both himself and the woman whose heart keeps him alive in a zombie state. This sequel to Meaney's groundbreaking macabre fantasy "Bone Song", set in the same moodily atmospheric necropolis of Tristopolis, a city powered by the bones of the recently dead, features graphic horror and dark comedic touches. A superb addition to adult dark fantasy that portends a long life for the series.

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2009
In this sequel to Bone Song (2008), newly zombified police lieutenant Donal Riordan is determined to find the man responsible for his death. But to find his own murderer, Donal mustpenetrate a secret organization known as the Black Circle, whose fiendish mission appears to be taking over the city Donal calls home (and this could be merely the first step in a far more demonic plot). This is a mesmerizing novel set in an alternate reality in which magic, not science, is the basis of society and technology. This isnt one of those alternate-reality stories in which the world is pretty much the same as ours, with a few minor differences; here, were presented with an entirely new place, rich in detail and atmosphere. Its a place so vividly realized that we soon leave our familiar world behind and take up residence in this new, purple-tinged place with its living undead, its elevator wraiths, its gargoyles and magic-based technology. The story is a solid noirish mystery of dark revenge, but its the settingthis wondrous, rich, imaginative worldthat captures us.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)