Decades ago a young rock and blues guitarist and junkie named Niko signed in blood on the dotted line and in return became the stuff of music legend. But when the love of his damned life grows mortally and mysteriously ill he realizes he's lost more than he bargained for--and that wasn t part of the Deal.
So Niko sets out on a harrowing journey from the streets of Los Angeles through the downtown subway tunnels and across the redlit plain of the most vividly realized Hell since Dante, to play the gig of his mortgaged life and win back the purloined soul of his lost love.
Mortality Bridge remixes Orpheus, Dante, Faust, the Crossroads legend, and more in a beautiful, brutal--and surprisingly funny--quest across a Hieronymous Bosch landscape of myth, music, and mayhem; and across an inner terrain of addiction, damnation, and redemption.
{"itemData":[{"priceBreaksMAP":null,"buyingPrice":29.22,"ASIN":"1596063750","isPreorder":0},{"priceBreaksMAP":null,"buyingPrice":3,"ASIN":"B003B3NW80","isPreorder":0},{"priceBreaksMAP":null,"buyingPrice":7.19,"ASIN":"0441017940","isPreorder":0}],"shippingId":"1596063750::3XV6fQLI6T0KzJLsvfdhdVgSHoxydJvrst%2FWZUQo41CTmZcidghaUDV7kK%2BBeKVCdgLoLncnfV3JAsU%2FQPLUpiiZzHIDh4oedofEqljmM82oAStZfuVPoQ%3D%3D,B003B3NW80::6ZFX9AKjonOEf3QWwbqApcH3ny88GjVjjAeUs3yOnI3kX7y%2BDeBEAfMnewZHVQEg%2BbNIvYdMFceRvAd6tWFGELiwYIVgkoZtDm%2B%2F26bvf%2FIVI6CPK9Vj1A%3D%3D,0441017940::nhFwA1wzLuqdLtbONocwRtVX7teMmvF%2BvyZ45yv%2BIwlFU%2Bb76qKM1txyF7qTnAiFDs16AfmHQj%2FpghWeSYfemmD0hzk%2B6%2FrS2ZxXc8NXb33eUKgwNuKLeA%3D%3D","sprites":{"addToWishlist":["wl_one","wl_two","wl_three"],"addToCart":["s_addToCart","s_addBothToCart","s_add3ToCart"],"preorder":["s_preorderThis","s_preorderBoth","s_preorderAll3"]},"currenyCode":"USD","shippingDetails":{"xz":"same","yz":"same","xy":"same","xyz":"same"},"tags":["x","y","z"],"strings":{"addToWishlist":["add to wishlist","Add both to Wish List","Add all three to Wish List"],"addToCart":["Add to Cart","Add both to Cart","Add all three to Cart"],"showDetailsDefault":"Show availability and shipping details","shippingError":"An error occurred, please try again","hideDetailsDefault":"Hide availability and shipping details","priceLabel":["Price:","Price for both:","Price for all three:"],"preorder":["Pre-order this item","Pre-order both items","Pre-order all three items"]}}
"Luminously tragic, darkly funny, and deeply moving, all in turns and sometimes all at once. Boyett is one of the few writers who will make you eager to go into Hell, and not worry about whether you return. I wasn't expecting how much this book affected me. Good stuff, folks. Don't miss out." --John Scalzi (Old Man's War, Whatever)
"Through unusual turns of phrase, heart-rending introspection, and mythic tone, Boyett explores themes of betrayal, redemption, and personal sacrifice in a tortured landscape of bedlam and pandemonium." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Niko's race through Hell is one of the greatest supernatural adventure stories of recent memory. It is not a mere allegory about sin and redeption, cowardice and nobility: it's also a damned good story, which sets it apart from almost all existential allegories." --Cory Doctorow
"Brilliant. An unforgettable tale of one man's journey to Hell. The writing is filled with vivid sensory detail. I was pushed to my limits by this one. Immeasurably sad. Moments of transcendent joy and beauty and compassion. A very well-written book that made me feel intense emotion. I recommend it." --Fantasy Literature
"Mortality Bridge has something for everyone: great characterization, vivid description, pulse pounding action. It's a story of human weakness and redemption that's even older than the myths the novel draws upon, a story we can all relate to. An incredible, touching, exhilarating work that I wholeheartedly recommend." --SF Revu
Product Details
Hardcover: 422 pages
Publisher: Subterranean; Signed Limited edition (July 31, 2011)
Steven R. Boyett wrote his first novel, ARIEL, when he was nineteen. Soon after ARIEL was published he moved from Florida to California, where he continued to write fiction and screenplays as well as teach college writing courses, seminars, and workshops. He has published stories in literary, science fiction, fantasy, and horror anthologies and magazines, as well as publishing articles and comic books.
His most recently published novel, MORTALITY BRIDGE, earned acclaim from Publisher's Weekly and popular authors John Scalzi and Cory Doctorow.
Steven is known for his dynamic readings and lectures. He has also been a martial arts instructor, professional paper marbler, advertising copywriter, proofreader, tyepsetter, writing teacher, and Website designer and editor.
As a DJ he produces three of the world's most popular music podcasts: Podrunner, Podrunner: Intervals, and Groovelectric. Steven has played clubs, conventions, parties, Burning Man, and sporting events.
Mortality Bridge is the Steven R. Boyett book I'd been waiting for. I thought that book was coming last year when I heard a long-awaited sequel to Boyett's wonderful fantasy novel, Ariel, was coming out. That sequel, Elegy Beach, was good but less intense than the original, like Boyett was trying to rekindle energy for a world that had enthralled him almost 30 years earlier. Like Nietzsche, I love only what a man has written with his blood, which Ariel was but Elegy Beach came a bit short of. But Mortality Bridge is the best Boyett so far. It has all the wonderful imagination in its plot as Ariel had, but it is far better written, simply beautiful prose. Boyett fuses two powerful myths, Faust and Orpheus, and sets them in modern times. Like Faust, the rock musician main character Niko has made a deal with the devil that costs him his beloved girlfriend's life, and like Orpheus he descends into hell to retrieve her. The hell he describes is ghastly and spellbinding, and his journey through it has you turning pages faster than anything Stephen King ever wrote. The passage through hell, which constitutes most of the novel, is so vividly described, so mesmerizing, that I could visualize it as clearly as if it were a movie, and a great movie it would be. The best thing about the book, which raises it above even Ariel, is that it is the product of not only an intelligent but now a fully matured mind able to grasp the metaphysical implications of its profound subject matter. It takes on questions of immortality, the nature of the psyche, the forces that may or may not govern the universe and treats each with the astute wisdom it deserves. It seldom insists on any answers to these questions; rather, like all our best teachers, Boyett leads us to deeper questions.... The finest book I've read in a long time.Read more ›
If you're planning a trip to Hell to get back your lost love, the best way to get there is by Checker Cab, because if you live in Los Angeles, the entrance to Hell is probably not where you think it is. This particular cab driver, however, knows the way and will get you there, if not without incident, at least in one piece. Welcome to the singular mind of Steve Boyett, where the souls of the dead are feathers, the torments of Hell are worse than you thought, and it just might be possible to save someone with a song.
Mortality Bridge is the story of Niko, an ex-junkie musician whose fame has come from literally making a deal with the devil (actually, an agent of the devil named Phil). After achieving success and some amount of happiness, Niko's girlfriend Jemma falls ill and dies, and like Orpheus before him, he sets out on a journey into Hell to try to get her back. That's the short version. In reality, Niko's odyssey is a long, painful trip through gleefully rendered torment. As Niko proceeds through the various plains and mountains, rivers and oceans of "The Park," as its inhabitants fondly refer to Hell, Boyett's unrelenting descriptions of torture boggle the mind, and like being compelled to look at a car crash on the side of the road, I found myself reading certain horrible passages over and over again. At one point it occurred to me that once Niko got to where he was going, he would have to go back through it all in order to get out. (Not to worry, readers, the return trip is fairly swift.) Niko is aided along the way by a variety of Hell's denizens, including demons and acquaintances from his past. On a speeding train we meet Nikodemus, Niko's own demon, a strangely loveable character who embodies all of Niko's past mistakes and is now determined to help him get home....
The story moves at breakneck speed from start to finish, punctuated by flashbacks from Niko's past as he reminisces about his fractured relationship with Jemma, life as a drug-addled musician, and the sudden and terrible death of his brother Van. But the horror of Hell is tempered by Steve's mastery of prose. His lovely, uncommon sentence structure is especially poignant as Niko muses on his past with Jemma:
"...in his heart he'd felt a driven nail of terror because she already loved him more than ever he would her."
It is sentences like this that enable the reader to understand how keenly Niko feels for those he has failed. And in the background, like an unsteady pulse, Niko's music accompanies him on his journey, as references to the blues are scattered throughout the story. (The chapter names, in fact, are all blues song titles.)
I won't tell you what happens to Niko. You'll just have to read Mortality Bridge for yourself. I will tell you this, however: it was worth the painful trip to Hell and back just to get to the end. Niko's story may end on page 417, but his journey has just begun.Read more ›
The book presented an interesting perspective on a landscape that is not often discussed. Long lines and wasp nests will always have me thinking of this book. Another part of the fun was finding lyrics to songs that are spread throughout the pages.
This is Boyett's best work to date. Ariel, his first book, was excellent. His second, Elegy Beach, was better. Mortality Bridge brings his work to an entirely new level. This is quite simply one of the finest books I've read this year, and it will be a crime if it isn't nominated for a Hugo.
Buy this book. Buy it new. Buy copies for your friends.
Oh, and Steven, I'll be wanting the cabbie's phone number.
This is perhaps one of the most intense, horrific, gross, entrancing, spell-binding, original, wonderful books I've ever read. At times, I had to just put the book down and walk away for a while....couldn't take it anymore. But, I always went back....always. It was the writing, the prose (regardless of the often terrible things being described in the story) that made me want to read more. The interweaving of so many of the myths and beliefs across cultures is masterful. To take a plot that's been worked to death (pun intended) by other authors over eons of time and make it truly original is the work of a literary artist. The pacing and use of language that disregards accepted usage of punctuation and grammar which would make your high school English teacher cringe is totally right in this story. It pulled me along at breakneck speed, and then, it put on the brakes to make me really, really see what the author so very much wanted me to see. Wonderful writing, just wonderful. I'd like to someday have an audio version of this book, but it would need to be read by the best possible narrator. This book deserves it. Read this book! Yes, it's gross, intense, brutal and sad, but it's also very moving, with a main character who you so hope finds that happy ending after literally going through Hell and back. The ending? It's not what I expected...it's better.
