Jeff Noon and Steve Beard have created a surreal and visionary fantasy of dream England. Like Wonderland, Gormenghast and Perdido Street Station, the world of Gogmagog and Ludluda is a unique feast for the imagination.
Gogmagog and Ludluda are forthcoming from Angry Robot Books on February 13, 2024 and November 26, 2024, respectively. Check out the full covers and descriptions below!
Gogmagog tells the story of an epic journey through the sixty-mile long ghost of a dragon. Travel is by boat, a rickety steam launch captained by veteran taxi pilot Cady Meade, on the river Nysis. In her heyday Cady carried people and goods from the thriving seaports of the estuary into Ludwich, the capital city. Now she’s drunk, holed up in a rundown seaside resort, telling her bawdy tales for shots of rum. All that’s about to change, when two strangers seek her out, asking for transport, one of whom—a young girl—is very ill, and in great danger. The other, an artificial being of singular character, has secrets hidden inside his crystal skull. So begins the voyage of the Juniper.
The Nysis is unlike any other river. Mysteries unfold with each port of call. Not many can navigate these channels, not many know of its whirlpools and sandbanks, and of the ravenous creatures that lurk beneath the surface.
Cady used to have the necessary knowledge, and the powers of spectral navigation.
But her glory days are well behind her now.
This might well be her final journey.
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Gogmagog
Concluding the epic two-book series from the highly celebrated and award-winning authors Jeff Noon and Steve Beard. Ludluda, the sequel to Gogmagog, takes us on a haunting and delightfully witty adventure in a fantasy world which defies genre.
Luluda tells the story of a journey through a strange modern city whose power is sourced from the ghost of a dragon. Ludwich may no longer be at war with its great political rival overseas, but veteran sailor Cady Meade, survivor of many battles, suspects that the hard-won peace is about to break. She promises to deliver a preternatural ten-year old girl to a coming-of-age festival in the heart of Ludwich. But she has been warned by the prophets that dangers lie ahead.
Cady suspects that the young girl’s fate is entwined with that of the city. When the girl disappears, the old sailor must hunt her down, accompanied by a know-it-all mechanical man whose circuits are slowly grinding to dust. But Cady’s mission has always been to guard Ludwich from enemies both known and occult, and she will never give up.
Following the course of the River Nysis through the city, and beyond, Cady must uncover the final mysteries of the great dragon Haakenur’s life and death and afterlife. Her greatest battle is about to begin.
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Jeff Noon is an award-winning British novelist, short story writer and playwright. He won the Arthur C Clarke Award for Vurt, the John W Campbell award for Best New Writer, a Tinniswood Award for innovation in radio drama and the Mobil prize for playwriting. He was trained in the visual arts, and was musically active on the punk scene before starting to write plays for the theatre. His previous book, The Body Library, was nominated for the Philip K Dick Award.
Steve Beard is a writer who experiments with making essays and fictions from theory, history, testimony and psychogeography. He has written various speculative novels and documentary fictions and contributed to the anthology London: City of Disappearances, edited by Iain Sinclair. He previously collaborated with Jeff Noon on the novel Mappalujo (2016).
