It begins innocently enough, with the death of a prostitute in Bedford Square, London. She isn't the first 'flower girl' to die and she won't be the last, not now the killer had a taste for it.
The man, Nathaniel Seth, is one of the Brethren, a shadow society of occult dabblers and black magickers who hide away in the darkest parts of the city, in corners where they could not be seen by polite society. Little did Seth know that his own life was only hours from ending, his flesh to be taken as host for a daemonic entity clawed all the way out of hell's pit in the centre of the hollow earth because Seth himself breached the Catamine Stair. Now things are afoot. Strange things. The lions of Trafalgar have fulfilled their prophecy, climbing down from the plinths around Lord Nelson's column to defend the city. The daemon is out, stalking tender prey through the gaslit streets, meat markets, fish stalls and slaughter houses of Whitehall. He has a taste for women, though not ordinary women. These women are different. Special. They may look like whores but they have the blood of angels flowing in their veins. If he can kill enough of them, bathing in their innocent blood, then the daemonic Seth believes he can open the ancient Ald Gate--one of the seven great gates of London--the last gate to Eden, and go home, even if it means tearing London herself apart.
The gates are guarded by The Seven, bloodsucking angelkind put there to guard a very special prisoner. A prisoner who cannot be allowed to escape. Satanial. The Devil by another name. Cast down and trapped in a hell on earth, watched over by Uriel, the mad Archangel.
A few stedfast men stand in the daemon's way, led by Fabian Stark, a man himself doomed to die before even the first die is cast, and each of them cursed in their own way: Dorian Carruthers, Haddon McCreedy, Eugene Napier, Anthony Millington, and Brannigan Locke. The Grayfriar's Gentleman's Club.
Can these few men stop the daemonic Seth from opening the gates and all hell breaking loose?
It is as though Savile is the bastard child of Philip Pulman and Neil Gaiman, and London Macabre, part serial killer novel, part vast fabulist Victoriana epic, part Steampunk novel with a great slice of occultism and mysticism as well as a radical warping of all things holy, is quite unlike any dark fantasy novel you've ever read.
Description:
It begins innocently enough, with the death of a prostitute in Bedford Square, London. She isn't the first 'flower girl' to die and she won't be the last, not now the killer had a taste for it.
The man, Nathaniel Seth, is one of the Brethren, a shadow society of occult dabblers and black magickers who hide away in the darkest parts of the city, in corners where they could not be seen by polite society. Little did Seth know that his own life was only hours from ending, his flesh to be taken as host for a daemonic entity clawed all the way out of hell's pit in the centre of the hollow earth because Seth himself breached the Catamine Stair. Now things are afoot. Strange things. The lions of Trafalgar have fulfilled their prophecy, climbing down from the plinths around Lord Nelson's column to defend the city. The daemon is out, stalking tender prey through the gaslit streets, meat markets, fish stalls and slaughter houses of Whitehall. He has a taste for women, though not ordinary women. These women are different. Special. They may look like whores but they have the blood of angels flowing in their veins. If he can kill enough of them, bathing in their innocent blood, then the daemonic Seth believes he can open the ancient Ald Gate--one of the seven great gates of London--the last gate to Eden, and go home, even if it means tearing London herself apart.
The gates are guarded by The Seven, bloodsucking angelkind put there to guard a very special prisoner. A prisoner who cannot be allowed to escape. Satanial. The Devil by another name. Cast down and trapped in a hell on earth, watched over by Uriel, the mad Archangel.
A few stedfast men stand in the daemon's way, led by Fabian Stark, a man himself doomed to die before even the first die is cast, and each of them cursed in their own way: Dorian Carruthers, Haddon McCreedy, Eugene Napier, Anthony Millington, and Brannigan Locke. The Grayfriar's Gentleman's Club.
Can these few men stop the daemonic Seth from opening the gates and all hell breaking loose?
It is as though Savile is the bastard child of Philip Pulman and Neil Gaiman, and London Macabre, part serial killer novel, part vast fabulist Victoriana epic, part Steampunk novel with a great slice of occultism and mysticism as well as a radical warping of all things holy, is quite unlike any dark fantasy novel you've ever read.