The Steel Seraglio

by Mike Carey, Linda Carey, Louise Carey

Overview

“A confident One Thousand and One Nights for our present . . . Furious pop entertainment—full of sex, passion, violence, and magic.” —Slant magazine
 
This is the story of the legendary City of Women, told through the tales of those who founded it, championed it, and made it flourish. When the city of Bessa undergoes a violent coup, its lazy, laissez-faire ruler, Bokhari Al-Bokhari, is replaced by the religious zealot Hakkim Mehdad. With little use for the pleasures of the flesh, Hakkim sends his predecessor’s 365 concubines to a neighboring sultan as a gift.
 
But when the new sultan discovers the concubines are harboring Al-Bokhari’s youngest son—a child who might grow up to challenge his rule—he repents of his mercy and sends his soldiers to slaughter the seraglio down to the last woman and child. What he doesn’t count on is a concubine trained in the art of murder—or the courage and fortitude of the women who will rise up with her to forge their own city out of the unforgiving desert.
 
It’s an undertaking beset with challenges: hunger and thirst, Hakkim’s relentless hate, and the struggle to make a place for themselves in a world determined to underestimate and undermine them. Through a mosaic of voices and tales, we learn of the women’s miraculous rise, their time of prosperity—and how they carried with them the seed of their own destruction.
 
“A thrilling tale.” —Publishers Weekly
 
“A masterful, engaging and utterly fascinating story by three wonderful writers.” —SFRevu.com
 
“The Steel Seraglio brings its alternate world of struggle, politics and magic very much to life.” —Locus

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781504065504
Publisher:	Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
Publication date:	03/02/2021
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	16 Years

About the Author

Louise Carey read English at University College, Oxford, and holds a master’s degree in psychology from Oxford Brookes. She has been writing since the age of fifteen, when she coauthored the graphic novel Confessions of a Blabbermouth with her father, Mike. She has since cowritten two fantasy novels with her parents, The Steel Seraglio and The House of War and Witness. She currently works as a writer and editor, dividing her time between freelance projects and the Dungeons & Dragons blog Tabletop Tales, which she runs with her partner. Her debut trilogy of novels has just been commissioned by Gollancz, with the first installment, Inscape, due out in January 2021.

Mike Carey has written extensively in the comics field, where his credits include Lucifer, Hellblazer, X-Men,and The Unwritten, which was nominated for both the Eisner and Hugo Awards. He is also the author of the Felix Castor series, and has coauthored two fantasy novels, The Steel Seraglio and The House of War and Witness,with his wife, Linda, and daughter, Louise. Carey is also the author of the novel The Girl with All the Gifts under the name M. R. Carey. He is currently writing a screenplay, Silent War,for Slingshot Studios and Intrepid Pictures.

Linda Carey is a teacher, writer, and fantasy enthusiast. She taught in schools for twenty years and is currently the head of education at Keats House in Hampstead. She has coauthored two fantasy novels, The Steel Seraglio and The House of War and Witness,with her husband, Mike, and daughter, Louise. She has also written a young adult trilogy, Darkest Age, under the pseudonym A. J. Lake.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for the Careys

“The Careys nest smaller tales within the larger story and often jump around in time; it’s a good approach, backed by fast pacing and great characters . . . [ The Steel Seraglio is] a thrilling tale.”
— Publishers Weekly

“ The Steel Seraglio brings its alternate world of struggle, politics and magic very much to life, transcending the more labored construct of symbol and metaphor in a fairy tale or fable retold only to make some kind of point.”
— Locus

“With remarkable elegance, the Careys have enriched meta-fictional allegory into furious pop entertainment—full of sex, passion, violence, and magic. The Steel Seraglio is razor-sharp, cutting straight through the bullshit of bigotry to tell a fun, resonant story.”
— Slant Magazine

“ The Steel Seraglio is not a work of feminist or utopian theory. Nor is it a historical fantasy, a romance, a thriller, a poem, an allegory, or an epic. Rather, somehow, it is all of these things, mixed with a handful of gnomic utterances, a generous splash of the comic, and permeated by a deep understanding of what it means to weave a fairytale through with vision, to tell stories as a way of making meaning and making change, and to let those stories hang and fall. . . .”
— Neon Magazine

“ The Steel Seraglio is a masterful, engaging and utterly fascinating story by three wonderful writers. One can only hope they will collaborate again, as this project has proven how well they work together. The reader is really the winner here.”
— SF Revu

From the Publisher