So… apparently it’s two months until the release of The House of Shattered Wings (eep!!) With that in mind, I thought we’d start doing a little related content on the blog; and what better way to whet your appetite than evocative images? I’m already running a pinterest board for the novel here: over the next two months I’ll excerpt the images I prefer and provide some commentary that will hopefully make you want to read the book 🙂

From ufunk, by John Walters and Peter Baustdaeter

Ok, so let’s start with basics: this is Paris in the novel. Your basic nuked city setting: following the Great Houses War (aka magical factions tearing Europe apart from 1914-1918 [1]), Paris is now a devastated city, its monuments scorched ruins (with the occasional magical trap), its streets covered in soot; and the Seine… the Seine not only runs black with ashes, but has become the place you really don’t want to get close to: the accumulated spells have turned dark, and people who walk too close to the river banks get snatched and dragged underwater; or strangled by tendrils they can’t see… Even bending over a bridge can rapidly turn lethal.

Nice place to live in, isn’t it? :p

Also, yes. If you’re holding an island like Ile Saint-Louis, Ile de la Cité, or Ile aux Cygnes, (Paris’s three islands), you now have a virtually impregnable fortress, if you don’t mind the fact that your river banks are totally off limits lest you lose your own people. The major setting for the novel is Ile de la Cité, which is the location of House Silverspires, sixty years after the end of the war: the city is still devastated because the damage was extensive and the infighting between Houses has never really stopped, but people are doing their best to live among the ruins.

Broadly speaking, the technology and clothing are a distorted version of the Belle Epoque: there have been some changes since then, but the Belle Epoque is understandably seen as halcyon days, a Golden Age everyone more or less overtly longs for, or regrets.

More next week!

Read Chapter One!

Full Pinterest board:
Follow Aliette de Bodard’s board House of Shattered Wings on Pinterest.

[1] No connection at all to real-world events ^-^

As you might have gathered if you follow my twitter or FB, the Advance Review Copies of the Roc edition of The House of Shattered Wings have landed at headquarters (aka my office, increasingly invaded by the snakelet’s toy cars, plush toys and board books).

Want an ARC of your very own? A chance to immerse yourself in a devastated, decadent Paris with fallen angels, alchemists and Vietnamese immortals?

You’re in the right place! All you have to do is enter below (disclaimer: this is my first time using Rafflecopter. I hope this works out). This is open to anyone regardless of where you live. This is open until Monday June 1st–I’ll announce winners Tuesday, but possibly I will mail the prizes when I get home from the Nebulas. I’ll sign and personalise the ARCs.
(if you’ve already subscribed to my mailing list, just click the button, give me the address you’re subscribed with, and I’ll count that as +1 point for you)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

(Also, if you’re curious about where I’d find shelter in devastated Paris: Notre-Dame, any day. Because a. it’s on an island, and b. consecrated ground, which always comes in handy! (you don’t have to be as detailed in your answer or even to justify it. It’s just a way of having a “fun” option to the giveaway. Though I do reserve the right to post some of the best ones 🙂 )

More info about the book (out August 20th from Gollancz in the UK/Commonwealth, and August 18th from Roc in the US):

A superb murder mystery, on an epic scale, set against the fall out – literally – of a war in Heaven.

Paris has survived the Great Houses War – just. Its streets are lined with haunted ruins, Notre-Dame is a burnt-out shell, and the Seine runs black with ashes and rubble. Yet life continues among the wreckage. The citizens continue to live, love, fight and survive in their war-torn city, and The Great Houses still vie for dominion over the once grand capital.

House Silverspires, previously the leader of those power games, lies in disarray. Its magic is ailing; its founder, Morningstar, has been missing for decades; and now something from the shadows stalks its people inside their very own walls.

Within the House, three very different people must come together: a naive but powerful Fallen, an alchemist with a self-destructive addiction, and a resentful young man wielding spells from the Far East. They may be Silverspires’ salvation. They may be the architects of its last, irreversible fall…

Praise for the novel:

THE HOUSE OF SHATTERED WINGS is a Gothic masterpiece of supernatural intrigues, loves and betrayals in a ruined and decadent future Paris — wildly imaginative and completely convincing, this novel will haunt you long after you’ve put it down.

Tim Powers, author of The Anubis Gates

If the image of Lucifer sitting on a throne in the ruins of Notre-Dame strikes you as awesome, then this is the book for you.

Marie Brennan, author of The Memoirs of Lady Trent series

Darkly entertaining. de Bodard makes Fallen Angels entirely her own in this post-apocalyptic Paris near the turn of the century. The personal politics of necessity blend and clash with the politics of the powerful as people—mortal and immortal—attempt to survive.

Michelle Sagara, author of the Chronicles of Elantra

So… September is just around the corner, and I’m quite happy to reveal the US cover for House of Shattered Wings, aka “OMG OMG so pretty” (also, creepy. Yes, this is a dark fantasy book, why do you ask? :p). The art is by Nekro, who also did this lovely piece I pinned on Pinterest a while back.

A book about a devastated Paris, fallen angels and the ruins of a once great House? Sounds about right!

(more seriously, I really like this. It’s got oodles of atmosphere, it says creepy in all the right places, and the burning feathers are just a lovely touch from the opening scene of the novel. This is meant to be Morningstar’s throne in Notre-Dame, in its current state, and I love the ruined city in the background! I’m sure that makes you want to pick up the book, right? *big grin*)

And here’s the cover copy:

In the late Twentieth Century, the streets of Paris are lined with haunted ruins. The Great Magicians’ War left a trail of devastation in its wake. The Grand Magasins have been reduced to piles of debris, Notre-Dame is a burnt-out shell, and the Seine has turned black with ashes and rubble and the remnants of the spells that tore the city apart. But those that survived still retain their irrepressible appetite for novelty and distraction, and The Great Houses still vie for dominion over France’s once grand capital.

Once the most powerful and formidable, House Silverspires now lies in disarray. Its magic is ailing; its founder, Morningstar, has been missing for decades; and now something from the shadows stalks its people inside their very own walls.

Within the House, three very different people must come together: a naive but powerful Fallen angel; an alchemist with a self-destructive addiction; and a resentful young man wielding spells of unknown origin. They may be Silverspires’ salvation—or the architects of its last, irreversible fall. And if Silverspires falls, so may the city itself.

More info here, and you can pre-order the book here: Amazon.com|Barnes and Noble|Book Depository|Amazon UK (obviously the last amazon link is the UK edition, which won’t have this cover). Out tail end of August (August 20th for the UK edition, beginning of September for the US edition).

105 000 words. Sekrit project aka the sort-of-urban fantasy set in Paris. Of course, it’s a first draft and more full of holes than a colander, and my next task will be to fix those before lobbing the draft to my kind crit group so they can deservedly savage constructively criticise it.

But for now I will bask in the knowledge of a job well done.

Here, have a snippet:

It was Ninon who first saw her. Philippe, though, felt her presence first, but hadn’t said anything. It wasn’t a wish to protect the young Fallen so much as to protect himself–his status in the Red Mamba gang was precarious as it was, and he had no desire to remind them of how much of a commodity he could become, given enough cruelty on their part. And Heaven knew, of course, that those days it didn’t take much for cruelty or despair to get the better of them all, when life hung on a razor’s edge, even for a former Immortal.
They’d been scavenging in the Grands Magasins–desperate and hungry, as Ninon had put it, because no one was foolish enough to go down there among the ruins of the Magicians’ War, with spells that no one had had time to clean up primed and ready to explode in your face, with the ghosts and the hauntings and the odour of death that still hung like fog over the wrecks of counters and the faded posters advertising garments and perfumes from another, more innocent age.

(picture via Patron of the Arts)