Lye Street - Alan Campbell

[Lye Street] …also has some strikingly beautiful moments, in that harsh, dark way some of us love so well.  The journey of the angel Carnival is most compelling, as she simultaneously follows and flees messages seemingly addressed to her, scrawled across the walls and tunnels and towers of the dangling city.  Neatly juxtaposed are Sal Greene’s sojourns through demonic realms as he struggles to save his family from Carnival’s murderous intent.  This is a world where good and evil are not absolutes, where it is as easy to sympathize and root for an unearthly murderer as it is for her future victim.

Campbell meshes pity with terror against the bleak phantasmagoric backdrop of a city suspended from chains, swinging dismally over a yawning abyss.  In a civilization literally built upon nothing, dark magic and vengeance are the rule of the day, and Campbell will quickly have readers under his creepy and sometimes heartbreaking spell.