The Crow Foretells a Stormy Day

Take care when you visit the city of A-che, where the ice and the frost, the sunlight and the spring melt have their own ideas about the meaning of sustainability. No one lives in the city of A-che for the climate. When it isn’t grey, dim, mildewed, and miserable, it’s sweltering, smoldering, and oppressive. And that was before the weather began to act up. Since then, little has gone as it should. The small footprint left by an eco-entrepreneur has melted away altogether. The car wash patronized by the manager of a construction site has involved itself in an unusually authentic solstice celebration. An eccentric choreographer who likes to throw axes at his dancers has given his newest ingenue a breakthrough role that, quite literally, sets fire to the house. And a celebrated conceptual artist has found his muse in a blind and needy sea serpent…

Vivid, literate, and darkly comic, The Crow Foretells a Stormy Day is a masterwork of precision horror. If Walter de la Mare or China Mieville collaborated with Edward Gorey, the world they imagined might read something like this.