Terminus (The Unity)

Operatives from an alien culture struggle to survive in medieval Italy, in the SF sequel to the astonishing Quietus. The transdimensional empire, the Unity, has dissolved, its ruling powers forced into exile - but empires don't die easily. The living planarship Ways and Means has come to medieval Earth and ended the Black Death, but it keeps its intentions to itself. Someone is trying to kill its agent Osia, who is suffering through her own exile. Spy-turned-anthropologist Meloku becomes a target, too, when she catches Ways and Means concealing the extent of its meddling. While they fight to survive, Fiametta - an Italian soldier, mercenary, and heretical preacher - raises an army and a religious revolt, aiming to split Europe in half. File Under: Science Fiction [ Last Throes | The Saviour | Let It Burn | Crisis of Faith ] Jeff Noon returns with a staggering hallucinogenic sequel to A Man of Shadows, taking hapless investigator John Nyquist into a city where reality is contaminated by the imagination of its citizens In a city dissolving into an infected sprawl of ideas, where words come to life and reality is contaminated by stories, John Nyquist wakes up in a room with a dead body... The dead man’s impossible whispers plunge him into a murder investigation like no other. Clues point him deeper into an unfolding story infesting its participants as reality blurs between place and genre. Only one man can hope to put it all back together into some kind of order, enough that lives can be saved... That man is Nyquist, and he is lost. File Under: Science Fiction "The transdimensional empire, the Unity, has dissolved, its ruling powers forced into exile - but empires don't die easily. The living planarship Ways and Means has come to medieval Earth and ended the Black Death, but it keeps its intentions to itself. Someone is trying to kill its agent Osia, who is suffering through her own exile. Spy-turned-anthropologist Meloku becomes a target, too, when she catches Ways and Means concealing the extent of its meddling. While they fight to survive, Fiametta - an Italian soldier, mercenary, and heretical preacher - raises an army and a religious revolt, aiming to split Europe in half."-- Provided by publisher "In a city where words come to life and reality is infected by stories, private eye John Nyquist wakes up in a room with a dead body... The dead man's impossible whispers plunge him into a murder investigation like no other. Clues point him deeper into an unfolding story infesting its participants as reality blurs between place and genre. Only one man can hope to put it all together, enough that lives can be saved... That man is Nyquist, and he is lost."--Publisher's website Jeff Noon returns with a sequel to the acclaimed A Man of Shadows, taking his hapless investigator into a city where reality is contaminated by the imagination of its citizens "Operatives from an advanced alien culture struggle to survive in medieval Italy, in the SF sequel to the astonishing Quietus." -- Publisher's website