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Death isnt always terminal in Alex Phebys novelMalarkoi.
Its just that, a lot of the time, it doesnt quite stick.
A main character is killed by his double, who then becomes him.
A meter is established: Someone dies.
They return to life.
Bones and flesh ooze back together.
This can be exhausting.
WhilePheby is writing fantasy, its clear that his interests are political.
But the two books published from the trilogy so far introduce joy into the equation.
Pheby clearly enjoys the fantasy genres cliches, and he does funny things with them.
Nathan is what you might call a chosen one.
This section goes deep underground.
It trails a lungworm that bites a child.
Everything in the slums is stretched into uncanny new forms.
Often, in this book, human characters seem beside the point.
Phebys real subject is objects.
Other people on the street are puppets: Marionettes.
A pair of mechanical mice wheel around the periphery of the Masters mansion, cleaning up messes.
It is filled with dead-life, elbowed eels included.
Nathans mother seems to be made of oddments of ribbon and irregular pieces of silk.
Stasis can seem the fate of any middle novel in a trilogy.
In one, you might live ten lifetimes without the minute hand making a single circuit.
(To which the boy flutters his pages in irritation.)
