Angol
The Keys once served as a living host of donor organs, bred from the large reptiles below the City and engineered for human compatibility. Their existence has been one of cages, scalpels, degradation, secrecy, and the pursuit of freedom bought by blood. With a visibly nonhuman appearance, their ability to interact with the City is limited. Freeing their brethren requires assistance from someone able to negotiate a method of Descent from the City to the surface world Below - someone visibly human.
The Lantern is a priest. His life has been spent in pursuit of the sole sanctioned religion, Direction, until a disastrous break from reality nurses the seeds of doubt implanted by his childhood studies. In him, The Keys finds an unwilling accomplice, driven by his fear of his impending return to the surface world.
One was born without a name. One has been struck nameless. Both are relegated to sub-human status by the system of second-skin identification through which the City's population is managed. Both seek a better existence, and must rely on each other in order to obtain it. The heat is suffocating, the sea is rising, and the Singing Rot creeps up through the Pillars that support the City. Haunted by the past blending into the present and the bleeding of their personal subjective realities, their only possible route is forward.
Perfect for fans of Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti, The Story of B, and Pathologic, this novel explores the structure of human as an assigned social classification, living with psychosis, and escape.
