Hell's Horizon. D.B. Shan (City Trilogy 2) [Paperback]

D. B. Shan (Author)

Book Description

Series: City Trilogy 2 | Publication Date: March 2009

The second volume in a noirish, gritty urban fantasy for adults from the bestselling author otherwise known as Darren Shan. The Cardinal is the City and the City is The Cardinal. They are joined at the soul. When Al Jeery is seconded by The Cardinal from guard duties at Party Central to investigate the murder of a woman at a hotel he little suspects that the dead woman will turn out to be his girlfriend. Soon he is involved in a terrifying mystery that draws in the dead, the city's Incan forefathers, the imposing figure of The Cardinal himself, and the near-mythical assassin, Paucar Wami. Wami is a law unto himself, a shadowy, mysterious figure who can apparently kill anyone he chooses without fear of punishment or retribution. And Al is about to find out that he has a lot more in common with Wami than he could ever have imagined...

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Written before Darren O'Shaughnessy became a bestselling young adult author as Darren Shan, this gory companion to June 2010's Procession of the Dead is a twisting, paranormal gangster mystery. Al "Algiers" Jeery works for the Cardinal, crime boss of the City. When Al's new girlfriend, Nic, is brutally murdered in one of the Cardinal's hotels, the boss asks Al to investigate. Al dutifully starts researching and quickly learns he knew nothing about Nic. Blind Incan priests, Nic's weird friends, and the terrifying assassin Paucar Wami conspire as Al's life unravels along with the mystery. Events occur in parallel to those of Procession of the Dead, but the stories are quite independent. Readers familiar with Shan's teen titles might need to exercise a bit of patience with the pacing, but fans of dark urban fantasy will eagerly look forward toward City of Snakes, the next installment. (Jan.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Shan’s second book about the City takes place during roughly the same time period as the first (Procession of the Dead, 2010) but features many new characters, only tying together events from both books at the very end of the story. Al Jeery is a dedicated soldier for the Cardinal and happy to do his job until the day he takes a body to the morgue only to discover it is his girlfriend. Asked by the Cardinal to investigate, Al takes on the duty, persevering through a complex and often seemingly impossible investigation. Like Procession of the Dead, this story takes place entirely within Shan’s fictional yet modern-day city, run by the Cardinal, but the plot is constructed in the fashion of a mainstream police procedural. With almost too many twists to believe, dozens of characters, and the complex mythology of the City itself, Hell’s Horizon is not an easy read, yet it may appeal to those who enjoyed China Miéville’s The City & the City. --Jessica Moyer --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Harper Voyager (March 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0007261322
• ISBN-13: 978-0007261321
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,001,738 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book #2 in the series, August 17, 2011

By 

David Edmiston "Dave" (So Cal) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hell's Horizon (The City) (Kindle Edition)

If you're a Darren Shan fan, you won't be disappointed. Just be forewarned that this is an adult series, not like his other YA series (plural).

This book caught me off guard. Usually when some time has passed between my reading book n in a series and then n+1, I go back and flip through the previous one as a refresher. But I started this one on a trip and didn't have a chance to look at the previous one. The events in this book confused me at first. I finally just gave up trying to connect the events in book 1 to the events in this second book.

SHAN PULLS A FAST ONE

It takes a long time, but the reader finally learns that this book is not a sequel to the previous book. This second book actually takes place at the same time as the first story. It wouldn't quite work to read these books out of sequence, because the first book sets up the scene so well. So book one and book two take place in parallel timelines until they finally tie at the end of book two, setting the stage for the third and final book in the series.

So what happens in this book?

I'm not telling. That's the real fun of these books.

The scenario is the same mobbed up underworld as Procession of the Dead: 1 (The City). The characters are similar, but different. But Shan's world tip-toes on the line between realism and fantasy.

If you read book one (The City) and didn't like it, then please don't bother with this one, because it's more of the same. But if you liked Procession of the Dead, then you won't be disappointed--maybe confused like me, but not disappointed. One good indicator is the fact that the reviews were so mixed (or actually pretty critical) for Procession of the Dead, but they're generally positive for this second book. So use your opinion of book one to indicate whether you'll like the second & third books in the series.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely Fantastic!, February 10, 2011

By 

Nicola Manning (Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hell's Horizon (The City) (Hardcover)

This is an adult book, make no mistake.

The summary of this book is going to be very hard to understand if you haven't read the first book. You can read my review of Procession of the Dead for a fuller understanding of the story without any spoilers. This second book starts off with completely different characters within The Cardinal's Troops, his own personal police/security force. The plot runs parallel with the first novel with very few crossover's until the end. The theme centers around a vicious killing of a young woman and Al Jeery, Troop member, is personally assigned, by The Cardinal himself, to solve the case. The case becomes personal to Jeery as he finds loved ones crossing paths with his investigation. This book also delves deeper into the mysterious Incan group of blind men in white robes, has more of a mystical element to it and centers on the mysterious but feared and dreaded hitman/killer/torturer Paucar Wami first met in book one.

A quick-paced read that ultimately reads like a mystery thriller for 3/4s of the book. Second books in trilogies are always compared to the first as we have expectations set up for us and while I certainly do describe this as a dark, violent urban fantasy, I found this not as dark, not as mafioso, not as violent (but don't get me wrong it is plenty violent!). Comparisons aside, this was a fantastic read, the mystery angle really shocked me having read a lot of Shan's books I didn't expect that angle coming from him. It was very well done. The characters are just as eccentric, as expected, from the victim's cross-dressing rich brother to the octogenarian pimp who always knows the word on the street. Those characters make it sound seedy but it's not, I don't remember any s*x scenes at all!

I'm hardly doing the book justice as it is just such an intricate book and since it runs parallel with the first one there are crossovers which are infrequent to start off with but rush to a head at the end. Now that I have read the final words of book one and the final words of book two, I just can't wait for the two to meet up with each other in the final book, City of the Snakes, due Mar. 2010 in UK, which means a month or so later for me here in Canada. Review originally written May 4, 2009.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Well-Done, Challenging Crime Thriller, January 21, 2011

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hell's Horizon (The City) (Hardcover)

With the release of the first installment of The City series, adult readers have been inaugurated into Darren Shan's peculiar, dark sense of humor. This bestselling author has a talent for creating the grungiest, vilest, most abominable human beings imaginable and somehow making them interesting and even relatable (in certain cases). His twisted plots and depraved humor give his books a distinctive flavor that is different from other works and ends up being a welcome change.

This second book follows PROCESSION OF THE DEAD, unfolding on a parallel timeline and spotlighting many of the main characters in the first book. The likable Al Jeery is a new protagonist, a servant to the monstrous gangster known simply as "The Cardinal." We return to the disturbing territory of this crime boss, a man who has never left "The City" for long. His territory is a peculiar organism whose dirty streets have become breeding grounds for the worst kind of scum. Hoods, lackeys, crooked cops and street maidens consort and sully every corner, hotel, restaurant and alley, all while worshipping and living in fear of the world's most powerful man.

The Cardinal's dreamlike City is somehow unbreakable, an odd monument to his fantastic and supreme power. It is tied so closely with the man as to make one wonder if he could even exist outside it. Mysterious and merciless, the Cardinal focuses only on his empire and the scope of his power, removing any challengers and leaving his associates without any evidence of their existence. Before long, it's clear that the Cardinal somehow possesses indistinct and unworldly abilities, the power to predict and control the world around him down to the last detail. His gifts somehow relate back to a group called the Ayuamarca and to the Incan priests who wander blindly through the streets. They are the ancient remains of a civilization that has managed to survive within the confines of a seedy and fiendish place.

Whereas the Cardinal and his understudy, Capac Raimi, had been the main characters in the first installment, Al Jeery is the center of this second one and seems a much more human (or at least a less threatening) sort. The Cardinal has berated him before for his human weakness and for lacking the ambition that those in power generally possess. What Jeery does possess is some unexplained ability to heal people when he chooses, and after receiving his recent promotion because of the Cardinal's misgivings about a murder, Jeery begins the long and difficult process of tracking down her killer and discovering the truth. In pursing this, he encounters some disturbing individuals, the scariest being the sadistic serial killer and assassin Paucar Wami. Unbeknowst to Jeery, Wami has ties to him that have been kept secret and land him in danger even while helping him uncover the mystery.

Though Shan's series is a crime thriller at its heart, there are many elements of horror and fantasy in it. Both installments employ elements of the supernatural, and Shan is careful to keep these consistent with the story and in keeping with the dark tone. The mystery is quite well done, and even practiced readers of mysteries will find guesswork about plotlines extremely challenging. This is one of the many reasons why Shan's books are so worth reading. Audiences will be surprised by the end over how much they'll look forward to reading the final installment --- which, by the way, you won't have to wait too long for, as CITY OF SNAKES releases in June.

--- Reviewed by Melanie Smith