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Nil-Pray
In a Gothic metropolis of the Dead, a necromancer learns that secrets never die.
Nil-Pray is the city of the Dead, where those who cannot rest in the grave come to exist forever. Although even the Dead find reason for strife.
In the wake of a terrible world war, the ancient, solitary nature of Nil-Pray must change.
Edmund Carver, professional sorcerer, fleeing a foolish past, is employed as one of the few living ever allowed to enter the city. He must work closely with the ancient, eerie inhabitants as they seek to engage once again with the breathing world.
As the Carnal and Spectral factions begin to war on each other, Edmund becomes the target of conspiracies, plots, and ancient ambitions of creatures sunk deep down in death.
Nil-Pray is the city of the Dead, where those who cannot rest in the grave come to exist forever. Although even the Dead find reason for strife.
In the wake of a terrible world war, the ancient, solitary nature of Nil-Pray must change.
Edmund Carver, professional sorcerer, fleeing a foolish past, is employed as one of the few living ever allowed to enter the city. He must work closely with the ancient, eerie inhabitants as they seek to engage once again with the breathing world.
As the Carnal and Spectral factions begin to war on each other, Edmund becomes the target of conspiracies, plots, and ancient ambitions of creatures sunk deep down in death.
ebook
First published June 2, 2017
11 people want to read
About the author
Christian Read
37 books14 followersI'm Christian Read.
I've written a few novels, a few comics and a few video games.
I enjoy whisky.
I've written a few novels, a few comics and a few video games.
I enjoy whisky.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
July 5, 2021
A copy of this book was received from the publisher in exchange for an honest review
Nil-Pray, “No Skin Land” (poor Aingelish translation).
The Great War began when an Archduke was assassinated by a minor death cultist. What gave the Aingelish the advantage that eventually saw them the victors was their embrace of Science--only the hopelessly parochial call it magic any more. But it is now 1925 and the consequences of creating werewolfen and binding asuras are starting to come home. Destruction on such an unprecedented scale has caught the attention of the Mortis Kings of Nil-Pray and for the first time, the ancient city of the Dead has accepted a Quick ambassador.
Richly inventive and wickedly cynical, this is a City narrative of sublime effect. As the young necromancer, Edmund Carver, and Shen, his suspiciously efficient batman, negotiate the Coriaceous Way through layer after layer of plots, assassins, bizarre rituals and downright disturbing architecture, they are forced to interrogate their own convictions, alongside the universals of power, difference and hatred.
“Nil Pray was a peculiar place to hate in. It was a refuge where the Dead found a queer felicity but, for all that, often kept habitudes from their Quick days. It was harder to hate for race when most skins had faded to leather brown or illness grey. Harder still when the skin had faded to muscle and bone. Often, gender was equally flimsy a foundation for bias, Breasts sagged to nothing. Penises rotted. Scrotums burst.... There was one simple divide immediate to all. The Carnal remained embodied and incarnate and the Spectral did not.”
It is difficult for either kind to damage the other. But Lord Stricken of the Carnal and the Geistenrex of the Spectral have not only remembered war, they have discovered technology.
As the struggle unfolds, the Quick perspective is not unduly privileged. Vexacious Surreal, one of Stricken's exquisite yet highly dangerous enforcers, is the reader's window into the relict passions of the Dead. A hundred years dead, nearly twenty alive, the questions confronting her are not those of Shen and Carver, but they have the same roots. And then, there are all the other participants in this game: Ezeltrice, whose name has become a by-word for sadism amongst the Quick, Orieum the Facer, Mme. Alison Neville, representative of the ATO, and above all, the Gentleman, “... completely unfleshed, a walking skeleton, polished and waxed.” Who affects a frock coat and stovepipe trousers, a gold and crimson patterned waistcoat and black cravat, with a ruby pin.
This is superb wordsmithing. The central action is contextualised with letters and a memoir composed well after the event, lending it depth but never weighting it. In other sections, omniscient narration expands the reader's perspective and these points should be carefully noted. The language is as lavish as it is appropriate to the decadent tone. But this book has pace and edges that cut, revelling in grotesque violence and passages of truly innovative cruelty. Whether the reader takes the Geistenrex at its word or suspects it of insanity, its ravings are brilliant grue. The steady escalation of threat, as Shen and Carver attempt to fathom a conspiracy that could threaten the entire world, culminates in a spectacular battle, that achieves a whole new level as the final pieces fall into place.
But, like Paradys, Ashamoil and similar urban fantasies, it is Nil-Pray itself that lingers in the reader's mind. It is the city that truly haunts.
“Mamoreal and magnificent, it broods in the depths of the rift valley and is ubiquitous. Unwalled, supreme in its confidence, the Thanatos Metropolis is white and pale and gallionic... Its silhouette, in relief against the black tors is surprisingly delicate. Buildings of bone and brick, steel and sinew that is sensible only to an aesthetic of those who have passed beyond dying. There is a frangible beauty here, minarets of rose-stone and beaux-arts apartments, classic and neo-classic manors and crook-backed shanties of alien function and design. The great road that leads into the city becomes a vein leading to the Town Hall ziggurat splitting occasionally to the east and west, and branching to create arrondissements and prefectures.”
This is the Coriaceous Way. It is not for heroes.
Nil-Pray, “No Skin Land” (poor Aingelish translation).
The Great War began when an Archduke was assassinated by a minor death cultist. What gave the Aingelish the advantage that eventually saw them the victors was their embrace of Science--only the hopelessly parochial call it magic any more. But it is now 1925 and the consequences of creating werewolfen and binding asuras are starting to come home. Destruction on such an unprecedented scale has caught the attention of the Mortis Kings of Nil-Pray and for the first time, the ancient city of the Dead has accepted a Quick ambassador.
Richly inventive and wickedly cynical, this is a City narrative of sublime effect. As the young necromancer, Edmund Carver, and Shen, his suspiciously efficient batman, negotiate the Coriaceous Way through layer after layer of plots, assassins, bizarre rituals and downright disturbing architecture, they are forced to interrogate their own convictions, alongside the universals of power, difference and hatred.
“Nil Pray was a peculiar place to hate in. It was a refuge where the Dead found a queer felicity but, for all that, often kept habitudes from their Quick days. It was harder to hate for race when most skins had faded to leather brown or illness grey. Harder still when the skin had faded to muscle and bone. Often, gender was equally flimsy a foundation for bias, Breasts sagged to nothing. Penises rotted. Scrotums burst.... There was one simple divide immediate to all. The Carnal remained embodied and incarnate and the Spectral did not.”
It is difficult for either kind to damage the other. But Lord Stricken of the Carnal and the Geistenrex of the Spectral have not only remembered war, they have discovered technology.
As the struggle unfolds, the Quick perspective is not unduly privileged. Vexacious Surreal, one of Stricken's exquisite yet highly dangerous enforcers, is the reader's window into the relict passions of the Dead. A hundred years dead, nearly twenty alive, the questions confronting her are not those of Shen and Carver, but they have the same roots. And then, there are all the other participants in this game: Ezeltrice, whose name has become a by-word for sadism amongst the Quick, Orieum the Facer, Mme. Alison Neville, representative of the ATO, and above all, the Gentleman, “... completely unfleshed, a walking skeleton, polished and waxed.” Who affects a frock coat and stovepipe trousers, a gold and crimson patterned waistcoat and black cravat, with a ruby pin.
This is superb wordsmithing. The central action is contextualised with letters and a memoir composed well after the event, lending it depth but never weighting it. In other sections, omniscient narration expands the reader's perspective and these points should be carefully noted. The language is as lavish as it is appropriate to the decadent tone. But this book has pace and edges that cut, revelling in grotesque violence and passages of truly innovative cruelty. Whether the reader takes the Geistenrex at its word or suspects it of insanity, its ravings are brilliant grue. The steady escalation of threat, as Shen and Carver attempt to fathom a conspiracy that could threaten the entire world, culminates in a spectacular battle, that achieves a whole new level as the final pieces fall into place.
But, like Paradys, Ashamoil and similar urban fantasies, it is Nil-Pray itself that lingers in the reader's mind. It is the city that truly haunts.
“Mamoreal and magnificent, it broods in the depths of the rift valley and is ubiquitous. Unwalled, supreme in its confidence, the Thanatos Metropolis is white and pale and gallionic... Its silhouette, in relief against the black tors is surprisingly delicate. Buildings of bone and brick, steel and sinew that is sensible only to an aesthetic of those who have passed beyond dying. There is a frangible beauty here, minarets of rose-stone and beaux-arts apartments, classic and neo-classic manors and crook-backed shanties of alien function and design. The great road that leads into the city becomes a vein leading to the Town Hall ziggurat splitting occasionally to the east and west, and branching to create arrondissements and prefectures.”
This is the Coriaceous Way. It is not for heroes.
July 5, 2017
Nil-Pray, "No Skin Land" (poor Aingelish translation).
The Great War began when an Archduke was assassinated by a minor death cultist. What gave the Aingelish the advantage that eventually saw them the victors was their embrace of Science--only the hopelessly parochial call it magic any more. But it is now 1925 and the consequences of creating werewolfen and binding asuras are starting to come home. Destruction on such an unprecedented scale has caught the attention of the Mortis Kings of Nil-Pray and for the first time, the ancient city of the Dead has accepted a Quick ambassador.
Richly inventive and wickedly cynical, this is a City narrative of sublime effect. As the young necromancer, Edmund Carver, and Shen, his suspiciously efficient batman, negotiate the Coriaceous Way through layer after layer of plots, assassins, bizarre rituals and downright disturbing architecture, they are forced to interrogate their own convictions, alongside the universals of power, difference and hatred.
"Nil Pray was a peculiar place to hate in. It was a refuge where the Dead found a queer felicity but, for all that, often kept habitudes from their Quick days. It was harder to hate for race when most skins had faded to leather brown or illness grey. Harder still when the skin had faded to muscle and bone. Often, gender was equally flimsy a foundation for bias, Breasts sagged to nothing. Penises rotted. Scrotums burst…. There was one simple divide immediate to all. The Carnal remained embodied and incarnate and the Spectral did not."
It is difficult for either kind to damage the other. But Lord Stricken of the Carnal and the Geistenrex of the Spectral have not only remembered war, they have discovered technology.
This is superb wordsmithing...
To read the full review, please go to http://www.tabula-rasa.info/AusHorror...
The Great War began when an Archduke was assassinated by a minor death cultist. What gave the Aingelish the advantage that eventually saw them the victors was their embrace of Science--only the hopelessly parochial call it magic any more. But it is now 1925 and the consequences of creating werewolfen and binding asuras are starting to come home. Destruction on such an unprecedented scale has caught the attention of the Mortis Kings of Nil-Pray and for the first time, the ancient city of the Dead has accepted a Quick ambassador.
Richly inventive and wickedly cynical, this is a City narrative of sublime effect. As the young necromancer, Edmund Carver, and Shen, his suspiciously efficient batman, negotiate the Coriaceous Way through layer after layer of plots, assassins, bizarre rituals and downright disturbing architecture, they are forced to interrogate their own convictions, alongside the universals of power, difference and hatred.
"Nil Pray was a peculiar place to hate in. It was a refuge where the Dead found a queer felicity but, for all that, often kept habitudes from their Quick days. It was harder to hate for race when most skins had faded to leather brown or illness grey. Harder still when the skin had faded to muscle and bone. Often, gender was equally flimsy a foundation for bias, Breasts sagged to nothing. Penises rotted. Scrotums burst…. There was one simple divide immediate to all. The Carnal remained embodied and incarnate and the Spectral did not."
It is difficult for either kind to damage the other. But Lord Stricken of the Carnal and the Geistenrex of the Spectral have not only remembered war, they have discovered technology.
This is superb wordsmithing...
To read the full review, please go to http://www.tabula-rasa.info/AusHorror...
October 9, 2020
Just when you think you've read it all, 'Nil-Pray' comes along and kicks those tired horror tropes into dust. An innovative and complex world-building with an eccentric and varied cast of characters that richly defines a world of spectral and carnal undead and the necropolises they have built for themselves in a re-imagined Europe of the 1920s.
Imaginative and thrilling, the heroics within are all too real and the the humanity evinced by both the living and the dead put so many other fantastical narratives to shame. I found myself deeply invested in its complexities and its characterisations with each of its beings invested with grand degrees of humanity, frailty and a concept of duty that transcends mortal concerns. I really can't recommend this enough.
I'm a long-term fan of Read's Lark series but this stand-alone volume plumbs even deeper and more arcane relationships between science, magic and mortality. If you've any interest in grimdark, found compulsion in George R R Martin's work and enjoy truly innovative world-building, take a deep-dive into 'Nil-Pray'. It's a truly astonishing work.
Imaginative and thrilling, the heroics within are all too real and the the humanity evinced by both the living and the dead put so many other fantastical narratives to shame. I found myself deeply invested in its complexities and its characterisations with each of its beings invested with grand degrees of humanity, frailty and a concept of duty that transcends mortal concerns. I really can't recommend this enough.
I'm a long-term fan of Read's Lark series but this stand-alone volume plumbs even deeper and more arcane relationships between science, magic and mortality. If you've any interest in grimdark, found compulsion in George R R Martin's work and enjoy truly innovative world-building, take a deep-dive into 'Nil-Pray'. It's a truly astonishing work.
October 26, 2017
Glad I bought this as an ebook as the in-built dictionary could catch most of the esoteric words and I could Google the rest on my phone with my other hand. Great use of language, incredibly evocative and poetic, even when dealing with rotting zombis (spelling intended) and other ghastly things. Extremely strong world building here, too. Really strong sense of a lived-in world with alternate history, society and culture which is introduced and communicated to the reader in a natural (or unnatural in the case of the undead) fashion, rather than the massive infodumps other authors use.
Definitely worth a re-read as it'll be interesting seeing the plot play out without the distraction of learning who is what and the rules of the universe. I'd be happy to read more stories set in Nil-Pray as there's plenty of scope for future tales.
Definitely worth a re-read as it'll be interesting seeing the plot play out without the distraction of learning who is what and the rules of the universe. I'd be happy to read more stories set in Nil-Pray as there's plenty of scope for future tales.
October 4, 2021
Incredibly inventive and beautifully written, I am very glad I picked up Nil Pray and plan on reading more from Christian Read in future.
The otherworldly city of the Dead, standout characters and expert wordsmithing make Nil Pray a very unique and exciting read.
The cultures and rituals of the Dead were so interesting (and grotesque in some areas) with so many ideas that I’ve not seen before.
Without going into spoilers, the only point I did not feel was wholly satisfactory was the conclusion, but this does not detract from the amazing experience I had with this book.
The otherworldly city of the Dead, standout characters and expert wordsmithing make Nil Pray a very unique and exciting read.
The cultures and rituals of the Dead were so interesting (and grotesque in some areas) with so many ideas that I’ve not seen before.
Without going into spoilers, the only point I did not feel was wholly satisfactory was the conclusion, but this does not detract from the amazing experience I had with this book.
December 18, 2022
Extraordinary work from Australian author Christian D Read. I've read most of his published work and this is by far my favourite, full of terrible magicks, undead monsters lifted from multiple folkloric sources, memorable characters and simply beautiful prose.
Despite it's being a stand alone story, i so long for a posequel set in the same world. Just a wonderful book.
Despite it's being a stand alone story, i so long for a posequel set in the same world. Just a wonderful book.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews