For nine hundred generations, the city of Deepgate has hung suspended by giant chains over a seemingly bottomless abyss. In the unfathomable darkness below is said to reside the dread god Ulcis, 'hoarder of souls', with his army of ghosts. Outside the city extend the barren wastes of Deadsands, inhabited by the enemy Heshette, so that safe access is guaranteed only by a fleet of airships. At the hub of the city itself rises the Temple, in one of whose many crumbling spires resides a youthful angel, Dill, the last of his line. Descendant of heroic battle-archons, yet barely able to wield the great sword he has inherited from his forebears, he lives a sheltered existence under the watchful eye of Presbyter Sypes, who rules the Temple. For despite his sense of purposelessness, Dill has a destiny about to unfold - one that will take him down into terrifying depths of the pit in a desperate quest to save the teeming but precarious city from total annihilation at the hands of a cunning and resourceful traitor.
What's also interesting is that Alan was closely involved in the programming side of the video game Grand Theft Auto, which he speaks about on his blog. I first met Alan at one of the Writer's Bloc events over in Edinburgh (yes, that's right: yet another Scottish author), and got chatting to him as well at the recent Eastercon. If you were at the Tor Uk event at Borders at the con, there's a good chance you picked up the sample booklet taken from Scar Night.
No comments:
Post a Comment