Part of Series
In a distant, tattered future an old woman, a young girl and mechanical man embark on a slow voyage in the shadow of the great dragon Haakenur up the vast estuary towards the city of Ludwich… Past plants on the mud-flats that send up brief, man-shaped clouds of seeds to lure you out, past shanty towns full of old sailors and pilots scraping a living from the dregs of the passenger trade, between the wicker effigies in the Wodwo graveyards this is a journey at once familiar from folk tales and country customs and utterly strange and alien. Cady, back on her boat and feeling every day of her 1,600 years; the tight-lipped but beautiful little girl and her rubber-stitched-faced, mechanical companion are an odd but warmly imagined and compelling cast to accompany the reader on a quest into a world of mysteries and terrors that leave the reader with an inkling that this world is perhaps more familiar than it first appears. Can Cady find her youth again?
Authors
Jeff Noon is a novelist, short story writer and playwright whose works make extensive use of wordplay and fantasy.He studied fine art and drama at Manchester University and was subsequently appointed writer in residence at the city's Royal Exchange theatre. But Noon did not stay too long in the theatrical world, possibly because the realism associated with the theatre was not conducive to the fantastical worlds he was itching to invent. While working behind the counter at the local Waterstone's bookshop, a colleague suggested he write a novel. The result of that suggestion, Vurt, was the hippest sci-fi novel to be published in Britain since the days of Michael Moorcock in the late sixties. Like Moorcock, Noon is not preoccupied with technology per se, but incorporates technological developments into a world of magic and fantasy. As a teenager, Noon was addicted to American comic heroes, and still turns to them for inspiration. He has said that music is more of an influence on his writing than novelists: he 'usually writes to music', and his record collection ranges from classical to drum'n'bass.
