Low Town

[StormAtlas]

Rigus is the greatest city in the Thirteen Lands, a glittering metropolis of crystalline citadels and sumptuous manors, where gentlewomen hide delicate smiles behind silken sleeves and bored nobles settle affairs of honor with cold steel. But light casts shadow, and in the darkness of the spires the baseborn struggle, eking out an existence amidst the cast-offs of their betters. This is Low Town, a sprawling warren of side streets and back alleys, of boarded up windows and false storefronts. Here the corner boys do a steady trade to the dead eyed and despairing, and a life can be bought with a clipped copper penny.

Low Town is an ugly place, and its champion is an ugly man. A former war hero and intelligence agent, now a crime lord addicted to cheap violence and expensive narcotics, the Warden spends his days hustling for customers and protecting his turf, until the chance discovery of a murdered child sets him on a collision course with the life he'd left behind. As bodies bloat in the canal and winter buries the city, he plays a desperate game of deception, pitting the underworld powers against his former colleagues in the secret police, hoping to find the source of the evil before it consumes him, and perhaps the city itself.

But virtue is rarely repaid in kind, and Low Town is no place for the righteous.

Has any one ever read Low Town? It's a great book that is gritty and combine fantasy with the ghetto/slums. Its less sexual than say G.R.R Martin but dives way more into drugs and addictions. The Anti-hero is a drug dealing addict who rose above the hardships of his life only to fall again. One think I really like about the series is that even though magic exists its pretty subtle and the main character mundane in that he lacks any power and in fact hates almost all mages for how they act and the things they do.

It also has a great vocabulary which I'm sure will leave you reaching for a dictionary more than once. This combined with the ruggedness of the characters and world is a great combination

P.s if you've ever grown up in a hard place or a hard way this is the type of fantasy book you can relate to. Its not just about being poor and oppressed but about how people live their lives under those conditions. Sex, Drugs, and violence

Edited December 10, 2012 by StormAtlas