Lower Proszawa is basically Weimar Germany viewed through a cracked lens, a place where the style of Brecht and Bauhaus coexist with genetically engineered creatures and dieselpunk robots that are upending the tenuous postwar economic balance.

The Grand Dark's plot is sturdy, but it mostly serves as a solid framework on which Kadrey drapes his sumptuous setting. Largo is a streetwise gutternsnipe who's valiantly managed to cling to a smidgeon of innocence and decency, and it's his persistent humanity in the face of Lower Proszawa's overripe immorality that makes the setting's murkiness not only bearable, but downright immersive. Looming in the background is Una Herzog, the mystique-shrouded proprietor and auteur of the Grand Dark, whose work is beginning to take an even more sinister turn as the threat of war begins to rise rise once more. Life is hard but not bad, although they each harbor an ambitious streak - and Largo's propels them into an adventure that stretches from the city's sordid underbelly to the heights of power, from androids and anarchists to U-boats and secret police, and of course, weaving in and out of the theater that Remy calls home. Largo is a young bicycle courier, addicted to the drug morphia, who lives with his lover, Remy, an actress in a lurid, Grand Guignol-like theater called the Grand Dark.īook Reviews Back To The Future - The Grim, Grimy, Chrome-Coated Future Its citizens, after having weathered a horrific, industrialized war, now spend their days pursuing the pleasures of the flesh, from sex and drugs to appetites far more grotesque. Kadrey has created the city of Lower Proszawa, a metropolis that's as grim as it is decadent. But being a secondary world, it is not the place we know. Where stereotypical secondary-world fantasy novels routinely take place in a fictionalized version of Medieval Europe, The Grand Dark takes place in a simulacrum of Eastern Europe between the World Wars.

And yes, as its title loudly advertises, the book retains every inky ounce of Kadrey's trademark darkness. Rather than lean, mean, and hardboiled, Kadrey's new standalone novel is a sprawl of ornately arranged speculative fiction that ups the ante for urban-set fantasy. At the same time, there's a pulp sensibility to Kadrey's fiction that's become almost a brand - a brand that he's rebelling violently against in The Grand Dark. From his early cyberpunk novel Metrophage to his bestselling fantasy-noir series Sandman Slim to his stint on DC Comics' Hellblazer, the author's work has steeped itself in the murkier extremes of morality, technology, and the supernatural. Richard Kadrey has never faced a deficiency of darkness. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title The Grand Dark Author Richard Kadrey

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