Wolfhound Century

By: Peter Higgins

Narrated by: Neil Dickson

Investigator Vissarion Lom has been summoned to the capital in order to catch a terrorist -- and ordered to report directly to the head of the secret police.

A totalitarian state, worn down by an endless war, must be seen to crush home-grown insurgents with an iron fist. But Lom discovers Mirgorod to be more corrupted than he imagined: a murky world of secret police and revolutionaries, cabaret clubs and doomed artists.

Lom has been chosen because he is an outsider, not involved in the struggle for power within the party. And because of the sliver of angel stone implanted in his head.

Critic reviews

"An amazing, fast-paced story in a fantasy world poised dangerously on the edge of quantum probability, a world where angels war with reality"—Peter F. Hamilton

"I absolutely loved WOLFHOUND CENTURY. Higgins's world is a truly original creation, Russian cosmism and Slavic mythology filtered through steampunk and le Carre. What really captured me was his beautiful style and language: his metaphors and associations flow smoothly like the waters of the Mir, and, like Lom without his angel stone, make you see the world in a new way."
—Hannu Rajaniemi

"Like vintage Mieville or Vandermeer, but with all the violent narrative thriller drive of Fleming at his edgiest. I fell into Wolfhound Century and devoured it in three days flat.Peter Higgins is a great discovery, a gifted writer with a route map to some fascinating new dark corners of the imagination, and a fine addition to the contemporary fantasy canon."
—Richard Morgan

Dazzling, rich Russian fantasy

This is an amazing book, set in a Russia-like land in a fantasy world, where the Easter edge of the continent ends in an endless forest and the brains of small animals provide nerves for technomagical golems. Our protagonist is a provincial police detective called to the capitol to find a revolutionary mastermind; complications ensue. Not everything is explained up front, but explanations do come. Be advised that it ends on a cliffhanger; I’ll have to see where the story goes next in the next volume.

The style and world building felt to me like a cross between Martin Cruz Smith’s Arkady Renko stories and Michael Moorcock’s The Warhound And the World’s Pain or Tim Powers’ Declare. This is enthusiastic praise.