For fans of classic sword and sorcery dark fantasy- from Tanith Lee to Fritz Leiber- looking for a modern, imaginative take on the genre, this lyrical gorefest of magic, music, and mayhem will enthrall.
The Red Empress is the only home Erzelle has known since the day her family was lured aboard and murdered, victims of a grisly ritual meant to make the elite immortal. Erzelle plays her harp for the diners inside this ghoul-infested riverboat, knowing her own death looms, escaping through the music that's all she has left of her parents.
Her nightmare's upended in the space of a day by the arrival of Olyssa, a fellow musician, but so much more.
Erzelle is swept up in Olyssa's quest to find her ensorcelled sister Lilla, a journey across a mutated landscape that leads them to an enemy responsible for the deaths of millions. To stop the slaughter of countless more, the pair has no choice but to draw on the deadly magic that reshaped the world ... a power that's as dangerous to its wielders as it is to its foes, one that's killing Erzelle even as she fights to control it.
"In this delicious debut, Mike Allen offers readers a gift of the most delicately layered dark fantasy presented carefully on a post-apocalyptic platter. Be forewarned, though. The nightmares contained within the luscious prose wrappings are sharp!"
Tiffany Trent, award-winning author of the Hallomere series, The Unnaturalists, and The Ti
"Mike Allen's The Black Fire Concerto is a dark, luscious feast of a book. Allen is that rare and wondrous scribe that is both poet and storyteller and excels at both. Allen has created a fantastic world of fantasy and horror like a Bosch painting, like a Shostakovitch symphony-something out of a beautiful nightmare; full of horned demigods and trickster fox-men, dark forests, riverboat abattoirs, beasts of straw and monsters made of dust, civilized cannibals and murderous chefs, glowing rune-magic rifles and immortal ghouls. He's given us a duo of kickass heroines to lead us through his rich and dangerous world and I hope this is only the beginning of their adventures. Like a powerful musical performance, The Black Fire Concerto reaches into places in you and stirs feelings, summons visions and leaves you looking forward to the next performance."
R.S. Belcher, prize-winning author of The Six-Gun Tarot
