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Deadstock: A Punktown Novel

Page 31

by Jeffrey Thomas

MONSTROCITY

  There are haunted places. Haunted houses. The metropolis of Punktown, on the planet Oasis, is a haunted city. An unassuming and aimless young man has begun to perceive the city’s dark tentacles in the lay of the streets. Its roots in the labyrinth of the subways. Its polluted taint in the eyes of the people he knows, and even loves. And this evil is stirring, building toward an apocalyptic culmination. The city is not only haunted – it’s perhaps a living thing.

  A finalist for the Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel, Monstrocity combines elements of science fiction with horror in the vein of H. P. Lovecraft, taking place in the milieu of Jeffrey Thomas’s acclaimed collection, Punktown – which China Mieville described as “searing and alien and anxious and rich.”

  DEADSTOCK

  Punktown, crime-ridden metropolis on the colony world, Oasis, is home to countless alien races. Among those stalking its mean streets is Jeremy Stake, a private detective with chameleon-like abilities he does not want and can’t always control. There’s his wealthy client, Fukuda, whose company makes synthetic life forms as playthings for the rich. Then there’s Fukuda’s beautiful teenage daughter, whose priceless one-of-a-kind living doll has been stolen. And there is the doll itself, growing in size, intelligence, and resentment. The destinies of all these individuals will converge, and collide, in Punktown.

  A finalist for the John W. Campbell Award, Deadstock received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, who said, “For a wild ride...readers will be hard-pressed to find a better vehicle than Thomas's bizarre multiverse.”

  BLUE WAR

  It is a jungle of blue vegetation, on a world in another dimension. Here, over a decade earlier, Earth’s Colonial Forces battled against the blue-skinned Ha Jiin people, in order to help support the autonomy of the Jin Haa people. Now, an attempt to grow an apartment village from an organic material has strangely led to the Earth colony of Punktown being replicated at an astonishing and dangerous rate. More strangely yet, a Ha Jiin security patrol has found three clones that the organic city seems to have regenerated from long dead remains. Shapeshifting private detective Jeremy Stake – a former Colonial Forces operative – is called in to solve the mystery, and soon finds himself fighting to overt another interdimensional war.

  Fantasy Book Critic called Blue War “another impressive entry in the Punktown mythos.”

 

 

 


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