Author Felix Gilman Supplies Seven Reasons Why You Should Read Gears of the City

Felix Gilman returns once again to the streets of Ararat in Gears of the City, a novel that Agony Column’s Rick Kleffel calls “A dark, dank and delightful combination of rip-roaring adventure.” In this sequel to 2007’s Thunderer, that novel’s priest protagonist Arjun is lost to himself, his memory shattered and his place uncertain in a city now abandoned of its once ubiquitous gods. Drawn into a quest to find a missing woman, Arjun learns that his destiny may be intertwined with that of Ararat itself.

I recently asked the author to share seven reasons why you should read Gears of the City if you haven’t yet. Read his response after the jump.

1. Because I asked nicely.

2. Because Gears of the City is, if nothing else, a very unusual book. Go on, give it a go, you might as well, you won’t read anything else exactly like it.

3. Because Gears contains, encoded within its long fustian mock-Victorian chapter headings, the Seven Secret Names of God, by which you may bind, abjure, and command the Angelic Host.

4. Because Gears straddles genres, encompassing elements of horror, high fantasy, low fantasy, sci-fi, surrealism, Alice-in-Wonderland whimsy, some comedy, action, what one reviewer of Thunderer (the previous book in the series) called metafantasy, a small quantity of noir, etc. You can think of it as one-stop shopping for all your genre needs. I do this as a convenience for You, The Reader.

5. Do you ever feel that the world is an puzzling, sinister joke, a conspiracy run by lunatics, in which even the smallest acts of kindness or love or reason are heroic triumphs of self-assertion? Yes? Then this is the fantasy for you.

6. Because it’s got a dragon, sort of.

7. The seventh reason is a secret too terrible for you to know.