The House of Shattered Wings

An epic fantasy murder mystery set in the ruins of fallen Paris

By: Aliette de Bodard

Narrated by: Peter Kenny

Paris in the aftermath of the Great Magicians War. Its streets are lined with haunted ruins, Notre-Dame is a burnt-out shell, and the Seine runs black, thick with ashes and rubble. Yet life continues among the wreckage. The citizens retain their irrepressible appetite for novelty and distraction, and The Great Houses still vie for dominion over France's once grand capital.

House Silverspires, previously the leader of those power games, now lies in disarray. Its magic is ailing; its founder, Morningstar, has been missing for decades; and now something from the shadows stalks its people inside their very own walls.

Within the House, three very different people must come together: a naive but powerful Fallen, an alchemist with a self-destructive addiction, and a resentful young man wielding spells from the Far East. They may be Silverspires' salvation; or the architects of its last, irreversible fall . . .

Read by Peter Kenny

(p) 2015 Orion Publishing Group©2015 Aliette de Bodard

Critic reviews

an intriguing mystery, elegantly written... with carefully crafted characters both with layers and depth, De Bodard reflects the best and worst of human nature in her novel

I strongly urge you to get House of Shattered Wings: it offers something a little different; a superb blend of intrigue, mystery and magic and urban fantasy; it's brilliantly written; and the story is gripping. I can't wait for the sequel. Very highly recommended.

Reading this novel felt like a very intimate experience, the characters and landscape are so well developed with such detail that one feels as if they are walking alongside them as the story unfolds... Ambience abounds in this novel.

Aliette de Bodard has made a name for herself imagining futures and alternate histories that showcase non-Western cultural landscapes and characters...this is smart and nuanced storytelling

Fascinating, moving and hugely readable

This book is wreathed in mythology, magic and mysticism and it is such a compelling read that maybe the book itself is magic

There's an intelligence-and, yes, an elegance-to The House of Shattered Wings that is as rare and precious as angel essence.

The devastated Paris of Aliette de Bodard's novel is especially haunting. This is partly because de Bodard, a Nebula Award-winning French-Vietnamese writer, lives in Paris and can convey a visceral sense of immediacy to a ruined Notre Dame or the remains of the grand department stores, and partly it's because of the sheer lyricism of her prose...A series of mysterious deaths turns the novel into a surprising but compelling murder mystery, which plays out according to the supernatural terms de Bodard has laid out so evocatively.

De Bodard aptly mixes moral conflicts and the desperate need to survive in a fantastical spy thriller that reads like a hybrid of le Carré and Milton, all tinged with the melancholy of golden ages lost.

In the end, de Bodard manages to weave together the backstories and fates of the various characters...into a novel that is both haunting and original, its sense of loss almost palpable, and it setting not quite like anything else in modern fantasy.

Aliette de Bodard presents a gritty, otherworldly Paris in her fast-paced, fantastical thriller.

It's a grim story with high-flown conventions, but by finding so much ugliness even in supernatural beauty, de Bodard makes both seem more compelling, and more concrete.

A fascinating Paris of decay and cruelty. ­Phillippe is a marvel of a character.

French-Vietnamese author Aliette de Bodard ventures into the realm of gothic fantasy and manages to create - despite the hoary premise of fallen angels and ancient curses - something startlingly and creepily original.

The House of Shattered Wings is an enthralling and fully submerging read with an intriguing power structure and a setting that has both an unknown and yet familiarly gothic feel to it.