The Twice-Drowned Saint

""Many have spoken about how angels can be both terrifying yet beautiful, but few have successfully captured the idea well-until THE TWICE-DROWNED SAINT, at least. A sumptuous, saw-toothed read, it is a jewel box of a novel, glittering with a thousand details and a bright longing we're all familiar with, this want for a place better than we're in now." --Cassandra Khaw, Bram Stoker and World Fantasy award-nominated author of NOTHING BUT BLACKENED TEETH "C. S. E. Cooney's prose is like a cake baked by the fairies." --Theodora Goss World Fantasy Award winner C. S. E. Cooney takes readers on a journey of wonder, terror, and joy in this mind-bending, heartfelt novel. Contained inside impassable walls of ice, the city of Gelethel endures under the rule of fourteen angels, who provide for all their subjects needs and mete out grisly punishments for blasphemous infractions, with escape attempts one of the worst possible sins. "Our narrator is Ishtu Q'Aleth (Ish for short), the new owner of Gelethel's only cinema (having taken over from her father). More importantly, she's also the secret saint of Alizar the Eleven-Eyed, Seventh Angel of Gelethel, and one of the fourteen angels who holds dominion over the city. As Ish explains it, at the age of eight she turned down Alizar's offer to be his saint, but, in a moment that speaks to the novel's charm, the young girl and the all-knowing angel agreed to continue their relationship in secret after bonding over their shared love of cinema. Near thirty years later Ish is desperate to get her sick parents out of the city, a near-impossible task given Gelethel is surrounded by an impenetrable blue serac. But Ish's situation grows even more complicated when a new arrival to the city, a girl named Betony, appears as Alizar's true saint. There's so much to adore about the THE TWICE-DROWNED SAINT ... [a] sublime short novel." --LOCUS Cover art and design and interior illustrations by Lasse Paldnanius"--