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3.5 

Something More Than Night

By Ian Tregillis
Something More Than Night by Ian Tregillis digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

Ian Tregillis's Something More Than Night is a Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler inspired murder mystery set in Thomas Aquinas's vision of Heaven. It's a noir detective story starring fallen angels, the heavenly choir, nightclub stigmatics, a priest with a dirty secret, a femme fatale, and the Voice of God.

Somebody has murdered the angel Gabriel. Worse, the Jericho Trumpet has gone missing, putting Heaven on the brink of a truly cosmic crisis. But the twisty plot that unfolds from the murder investigation leads to something much bigger: a con job one billion years in the making.

Because this is no mere murder. A small band of angels has decided to break out of heaven, but they need a human patsy to make their plan work.

Much of the story is told from the point of view of Bayliss, a cynical fallen angel who has modeled himself on Philip Marlowe. The yarn he spins follows the progression of a Marlowe novel—the mysterious dame who needs his help, getting grilled by the bulls, finding a stiff, getting slipped a mickey.
Angels and gunsels, dames with eyes like fire, and a grand maguffin, Something More Than Night is a murder mystery for the cosmos.
A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of 2013


At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

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36 Reviews

3.5
“I struggled to like this book. It certainly was no Alchemy Wars, which was my first foray into Tregillis' work. It was a bit of a mess, and way too in love with the physics of Heaven to the point that it repeatedly intruded on narrative flow. I'm sure the science is sound, but it got painful. The book until page 144 to get interesting. After that, we finally got into the swing of things -- possibly because we finally got some more personas to working with that weren't just constructs of the Plemora, heavenly domain of the Angels. After that, it slowly began to accelerate up until we finally hit the dime drop. The conclusion came too fast, with too much exposition, and I was left a little reeling by it. The good: some of this stuff is amazing. Some of the rules are interesting. Molly is a bitchin' lesbian protagonist, which we don't really get much, and she don't take no shit. Her agency -- which is a huge crux of the plot -- is great, and Tregillis never disappoints with amazing, dynamic women. The near future the story is only hinted at. The penitente, as a concept, is amazing, especially once you know what's at the root of the movement. The bad: The adherence to crime noir slang and tropes -- to the point where a librarian can piece this shit together with a single literary reference is beyond silly. We never understand why our inevitable con man chooses that mode, why that type of story is the sort of story that must play in, and why. The middling: That is one hell of an unreliable narrator, and I felt indignant, having been lied to for nearly 300 pages. So: Did like bits of, super frustrated by other bits, but it definitely ranks a 3 out of 5. Think I'm going to take a break with another author for my next book, though. I've read a lot of Tregillis over the last couple of months, and I need to have a palette cleanser before I take on Milkweed.”

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