Lye Street [Kindle Edition]

I found this book suprisingly involving and beautifully written.
Campbell has provided a basis for the next novel and this prequel filled some gaps in knowledge I had concerning carnival's history.

The best thing about this novel is that Campbell allowed us to empathise with Carnival, more so than in scar Night, despite the fact that she kills to stay alive. Her actions seem out of self defence, not enjoyment- and we can pin point the exact moment when she loses whatever sanity she had left. Also, the action scenes are my favourite as they read very well, although there aren't many in this prequel.

The novel also provided a very suprising side of Carnival's story and my only criticism is that it was too short! I'd read it in one evening as it the chapters flow very well.

Also, the illustrations are great!

Every month, on Scar Night, the rogue angel Carnival takes a random unsuspecting victim, breaks every bone in his body and sucks out every last drop of his blood (now that is a serious case of PMT). Every fifty years, she makes an exception and her choice is far from random. It's nearly Scar Night and her next victim, Sal Greene is expecting a visitor...

Lye Street is a short novel written as a prequel to Campbell's excellent first novel Scar Night. That novel was followed up by two less than excellent sequels (Iron Angel& God of Clocks and Lye Street post-dates all three, so I approached it with some caution. The second and third in the trilogy were not entirely egregious, but they lost much of the dark, foreboding, Ghormengastian atmosphere that made Scar Night so compelling. They simply seemed to miss the point.

This prequel however, does not, I am pleased to say. It resides entirely within the chained city of Deepgate and, if foreboding, is what made SN so good, then Lye Street bodes with the best of them. If you liked the Peakeian atmosphere of the first novel then, here, Campbell has certainly Peaked. Lye Street is easily on a par with the first of his novels, well written with evocative prose and vivid imagery, a cast of varied, intriguing (and somewhat Dickensian) characters and no little wit (Othniel Cope's "answer" to the ox cart driver's query being a slightly corny, but also very funny example).

The story itself is brief and to the point - it's point being to set the scene for Scar Night. Indeed it sets this novel up so comprehensively that reading it should really be compulsory. On the other hand, it also stands alone very nicely as an enjoyable read.

Well worth a go.

This is a wonderful novella. There are a number of reasons I say this: it is concise, yet it describes a vast fantasy world in clever little dashes of detail; it stands alone and is, contrary to one of the reviews, satisfying both in length and content; and though it sprawls and swoops and dazzles, this breathtaking journey is over before you know it--the read effortless.

The novella is a form that has fallen out of favour in the English-speaking literary world. The reason for this is that it denies our obsession with indulgence. Its strength is restraint, which many writers and many readers unfortunately don't value.

Campbell's strength here is that the world he draws is real and enthralling, and yet it is constructed with an economy of language not present in most novels. Campbell switches between two primary characters as he narrates this story: an angel and the man she seems fated to kill. Their stories are interwoven from the start, of course, but Campbell's skill is that the two stories diverge in the novella's middle, apparently moving away from the course we have been expecting, and then gradually, gracefully their stories converge again. This creates the narrative tension. Campbell's ending becomes more delightful as the anticipation guides us to a fulfilling and interesting resolution.