Synopsis
Norylska Groans…
with the weight of her crimes. In a city where winter reigns amid the fires of industry and war, soot and snow conspire to conceal centuries of death and deception.
Norylska Groans…
and the weight of a leaden sky threatens to crush her people. Katyusha Leonova, desperate to restore her family name, takes a job with Norylska’s brutal police force. To support his family, Genndy Antonov finds bloody work with a local crime syndicate.
Norylska Groans…
with the weight of her dead. As bodies fall, the two discover a foul truth hidden beneath layers of deception and violence: Come the thaw, what was buried will be revealed.
Review
Norylska Groans is a grimdark fantasy I’ve had on my radar for a long time. I’ve read Snyder’s excellent Cold West and River of Thieves, but this is my first title by Fletcher – and if this is anything to go by, I’ll be moving more of his work up the TBR pile. As it’s cowritten by two authors who have a reputation for writing bloodthirsty and brutal fantasy novels, I was expecting grim and was not disappointed. Right off, we have a scene of one of our protagonists, Genndy, watching a man get brutally torn to pieces by machinery in the factory in which he works. He’s then promptly fired from said job, and things only go downhill from there.
As a former soldier trying to support his young family, Gen desperate enough for new employment to get involved in organised crime. The other protagonist, Katyushka, is one of the few women to find employment in a setting that very much discourages them from doing so, taking a position as a secretary only to find herself pushed into a different, darker form of employment. This is where the magic comes in, and it’s one of the coolest concepts I’ve ever seen. Essentially, it involves extracting memories and personality traits from someone and storing them in stone, and anyone who touches that stone can then take on those traits or memories. The possibilities range from a stone that can make you become braver to even transplanting a human’s personality into an animal’s body or vice versa.
The dark implications of this are laid bare as both protagonists are forced to wear these stones in order to perform their new roles and are left grappling with memories that might not be their own and not knowing if they made their own decisions or if someone else did. The authors don’t shy away from the murky morality and the psychological aftermath of having this power at one’s fingertips and there are some truly haunting sequences throughout.
The rest of the world is equally well drawn. Norylska, the bleak city that gives the novel its title comes to life through the vivid descriptions of the cold, the stench of factories, and visceral violence that permeates the streets. Details are layered into the background that fill in the rest of the world with the result that it feels lived-in to its darkest, grimmest corner. Although this is a standalone novel, there’s enough scope here for more stories set in this fascinating place with monstrous megafauna, mysterious magic users, and endless layers of corruption in a stratified society in which nobody gets out unscathed.
I went into Norlyska Groans with high expectations but I didn’t know I’d be this completely blown away by the skill and creativity on display here. The story had its claws in me from the first page and didn’t let go, and the two authors’ styles work excellently together. This is a definite contender for one of my top grimdark fantasy novels of all time.
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