Jean-Christophe Valtat - Aurorarama - Gables

Start: Sep 27 2010 6:30 pm

A startling, seductive literary novel that entwines suspense,
science fiction, adventure, romance and history into an intoxicating new
genre.

1908: New Venice--"the pearl of the Arctic"--a place
of ice palaces and pneumatic tubes, of beautifully ornate carriage-sleds
and elegant victorian garb, of long nights and vistas of ice.

But as the city prepares for spring, it feels more like qaartsiluni,
"the time when something is about to explode in the dark." Local
"poletics" are wracked by tensions with the Eskimos circling the city,
with suffragette riots led by an underground music star, with drug
round-ups by the secret police force known as the Gentlemen of the
Night. An ominous black airship hovers over the city, and the Gentlemen
are hunting for the author of a radical pamphlet calling for revolt.

Their lead suspect is Brentford Orsini, one of the city's most
prominent figures. But as the Gentlemen of the Night tighten the net
around him, Orsini receives a mysterious message from a long-lost love
that compels him to act.

What transpires is a literary adventure novel unlike anything you've
ever read before. Brilliant in its conception, masterful in its prose,
thrilling in its plot twists, and laced with humor, suspense, and
intelligence, it marks the beginning of a great new series of books set
in New Venice-and the launch of an astonishing new writer. Jean-Christophe Valtat Aurorarama (Melville House, $25.95).