The etched city - K. J. Bishop

"Combine equal parts of Stephen King's Dark Tower series and Chine Miville's Perdido Street Station, throw in a dash of Aubrey BeardsleyandJ.K. Huysmans, and you'll get some idea of this disturbing, decadent first novel."-Publishers Weekly

Gwynn and Raule are rebels on the run, with little in common except being on the
losing side of a hard-fought war. Gwynn is a gunslinger from the north, a loner,
a survivor . . . a killer. Raule is a wandering surgeon, a healer who still believes
in just-and lost-causes. Bound by a desire to escape the ghosts of the past, together
they flee to the teeming city of Ashamoil, where Raule plies her trade among the
desperate and destitute, and Gwynn becomes bodyguard and assassin for the household
of a corrupt magnate. There, in the saving and taking of lives, they find themselves
immersed in a world where art infects life, dream and waking fuse, and splendid and
frightening miracles begin to bloom . . .

"The plot, with its stories-within-stories and its offhand descriptions of wonders and prodigies, brings to mind the works of Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges."-Locus