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The etched city by K. J. Bishop
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The etched city (original 2003; edition 2004)

by K. J. Bishop

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
9413522,227 (3.8)64
"Combine equal parts of Stephen King's Dark Tower series and Chine Miéville's Perdido Street Station, throw in a dash of Aubrey BeardsleyandJ.K. Huysmans, and you'll get some idea of this disturbing, decadent first novel."--Publishers Weekly Gwynn and Raule are rebels on the run, with little in common except being on the losing side of a hard-fought war. Gwynn is a gunslinger from the north, a loner, a survivor . . . a killer. Raule is a wandering surgeon, a healer who still believes in just--and lost--causes. Bound by a desire to escape the ghosts of the past, together they flee to the teeming city of Ashamoil, where Raule plies her trade among the desperate and destitute, and Gwynn becomes bodyguard and assassin for the household of a corrupt magnate. There, in the saving and taking of lives, they find themselves immersed in a world where art infects life, dream and waking fuse, and splendid and frightening miracles begin to bloom . . . "The plot, with its stories-within-stories and its offhand descriptions of wonders and prodigies, brings to mind the works of Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges."--Locus… (more)
Member:Longshanks
Title:The etched city
Authors:K. J. Bishop
Info:New York : Bantam Books, 2004.
Collections:Read but unowned
Rating:*
Tags:not weird at all really

Work Information

The Etched City by K. J. Bishop (2003)

  1. 50
    Perdido Street Station by China Miéville (Jarandel)
    Jarandel: Similar dark, steampunk-ish urban environments that sometime veer into the horrific and fantastical.
  2. 30
    The Alchemy of Stone by Ekaterina Sedia (rarm)
  3. 00
    A Book of Tongues by Gemma Files (ligature)
  4. 00
    The Scar by China Miéville (lottpoet)
  5. 00
    City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett (Euryale)
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» See also 64 mentions

English (34)  Spanish (1)  All languages (35)
Showing 1-5 of 34 (next | show all)
Well, written, but kind of falls apart at the end, and doesn't have much of a point. ( )
  Moon_Cthulhu | Nov 9, 2023 |
Loved it. Unsettling, disorienting, and disturbingly familiar. Like one of those weird awesome fever dreams you try to hang on to. Only written better. ( )
  WinterEgress | Dec 2, 2022 |
"The Etched City" is not your typical fantasy novel, by any means. There is a broad spectrum of technology in the land where the story takes place. There are no elves or dragons (thank you). Bishop creates memorable characters, but there are no heroes or heroines. There is, however, plenty of evil. There is a great deal of pain. Each of the characters is suffering in some fashion, if not physically then existentially. There is graphic violence, and no one to cheer for. There are discourses on religion and reality that will make you question the sanity of the speaker. I liked Bishop's use of language, but her characters' dialogue was frequently not believable. The plot is hard to tease out, and it's frequently hard to know where the book is going. Some scenes are so surreal, it makes you wonder what you're supposed to really be "seeing". This kind of book may appeal to some, but frankly I don't know why I read it to the end. Despite the Locus blurb on the cover, I see only a tenuous similarity at best to the works of Italo Calvino, all of which I've read. Dive into this book at your own risk: its rewards, if there, may be so subtle as to be easily missed. ( )
  MarkLacy | May 29, 2022 |
Simply brilliant.

It does require a lot of patience, this novel, since around 60% of it is setup for a series of events which, at the beginning, seem to bear no relation to anything else that is going on.

My advice is to read it as you would read a Wolfe book: by which I mean, sit back and enjoy the exquisite prose, and stop worrying about what you are supposed to be focusing on. The author has a goal, the story does go somewhere, and everything is included with a purpose.

I fear that we are losing the ability to read books like this in the mainstream, despite its relatively recent publication (although it's been 11 years since it came out--not that recent I guess). I notice that many readers and writers want to be able to see a book's direction, from the get go, which always puzzles me. Why on earth would you want to read something where you are basically invited to guess the thrust of the narrative in advance?

Enjoy the surprises, the allegories, the musings, the carefully constructed scenes.

Oh, and the head hopping. I'm loving that. I love books which break rules in this way and I think the head hopping here is brilliant. ( )
  Sunyidean | Sep 7, 2021 |
I think I heard about this in a random twitter thread, glad I did. It feels kind of...New Weird-adjacent, Moorcocky, Swanwicky. Actually you know what, it feels like what I thought Shadow of the Torturer was gonna be. A doctor and a mercenary, both survivors of a failed rebellion, travel to a distant city to start new lives. Drugs, violence, and an increasingly surreal B-plot with world-altering magic, visits from God, not sure what else. And the whole thing kinda reads like a Western with dashes of Burroughs (Edgar not William). Highly recommended, a good weird read. ( )
  jakecasella | Sep 21, 2020 |
Showing 1-5 of 34 (next | show all)
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» Add other authors (3 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
K. J. Bishopprimary authorall editionscalculated
Lacorte, EleonoraTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Miller, EdwardCover artistsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Youll, PaulCoversecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed

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Epigraph
I despise and execrate pride and the indecent delights of that extinguishing irony which disjoints the precision of our thought.
--Lautréamont, Poésies
Dedication
For Stuart
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There were no milestones in the Copper Country.
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(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
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"Combine equal parts of Stephen King's Dark Tower series and Chine Miéville's Perdido Street Station, throw in a dash of Aubrey BeardsleyandJ.K. Huysmans, and you'll get some idea of this disturbing, decadent first novel."--Publishers Weekly Gwynn and Raule are rebels on the run, with little in common except being on the losing side of a hard-fought war. Gwynn is a gunslinger from the north, a loner, a survivor . . . a killer. Raule is a wandering surgeon, a healer who still believes in just--and lost--causes. Bound by a desire to escape the ghosts of the past, together they flee to the teeming city of Ashamoil, where Raule plies her trade among the desperate and destitute, and Gwynn becomes bodyguard and assassin for the household of a corrupt magnate. There, in the saving and taking of lives, they find themselves immersed in a world where art infects life, dream and waking fuse, and splendid and frightening miracles begin to bloom . . . "The plot, with its stories-within-stories and its offhand descriptions of wonders and prodigies, brings to mind the works of Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges."--Locus

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