From the Deep of the Dark
Bloodless corpses, a vampire rumour and a heist that takes detective Jethro Daunt deep underwater.
About this book
The ab-locks have come up from the deep ocean, and they want someone returned to them. Charlotte Shades, a thief of the Middlesteel rooftops, is the someone. Jethro Daunt and Boxiron are the only people who can untangle what is actually happening.
The gill-necks of the deep ocean — the ab-locks — do not rise. Now a delegation has, with diplomatic credentials and an extradition demand. The person they want is a thief called Charlotte Shades, who is not exactly what anyone thinks she is. The case lands on Jethro Daunt, the cycle's most polished detective, and Boxiron, the steamman knight whose temper is shorter than his patience.
The detection plot opens into one of the cycle's deepest questions: who, in fact, was here first. The deep ocean has been keeping its own history. So has Charlotte.
The ab-lock civilisation is fully introduced. The Daunt and Boxiron partnership reaches its richest expression, Charlotte Shades joins the recurring cast, and the cycle's archaeology of pre-human powers tightens further.
- you loved Secrets of the Fire Sea and want more Daunt and Boxiron;
- you want a heist-and-investigation novel inside a fantasy world;
- you liked Tim Powers's On Stranger Tides for the strange ocean.