The City - Softcover

"The most satisfying, intelligent and enthralling epic fantasy I've read in many a year" -- JULIET McKENNA "An astonishing book ... combines extraordinary scope with first class characterization, devastating and visceral battles, a multi-layered plot and a tightly-focused narrative ... The City is easily the best fantasy novel I've read in the last decade" -- JAMES BARCLAY "One of the best fantasy novels I've read in a long time ... utterly compelling fiction, an awesome example of the genre ... brilliant" SF BOOK REVIEWS "A brutally visual world ... vivid, motivated characters each with a heartbreaking history ... thrilling and devastating ... a true epic" SCIFI NOW "A sweeping novel of great power" TOR.COM

Built up over the millennia, layer upon layer, the City is ancient and vast. Over the centuries, it has sprawled beyond its walls, the cause of constant war with neighbouring peoples and kingdoms, laying waste to what was once green and fertile. And at the heart of the City resides the emperor. Few have ever seen him. Those who have remember a man in his prime and yet he should be very old. Some speculate that he is no longer human, others wonder if indeed he ever truly was. And a small number have come to a desperate conclusion: that the only way to stop the ceaseless slaughter is to end the emperor's unnaturally long life. From the rotting, flood-ruined catacombs beneath the City where the poor struggle to stay alive to the blood-soaked fields of battle where so few heroes survive, these rebels pin their hopes on one man. A man who was once the emperor's foremost general. A man, a revered soldier, who could lead an uprising and unite the City. But a man who was betrayed, imprisoned, tortured and is now believed to be dead...