Paperback, 320 pages
English language
Published Oct. 24, 2023 by Kensington.
With brilliantly evocative, hypnotic prose, Trent Jamieson crafts a coming-of-age, elevated horror story about a headstrong boy—and the monstrous vampire who taught him to be a man.
The Masters, dreadful and severe, rule the Red City and the lands far beyond it. By night, they politic and feast, drinking from townsfolk resigned to their fates. By day, the Masters must rely on their human servants, their Day Boys, to fulfill their every need and carry out their will.
Mark is a Day Boy, practically raised by his Master, Dain. It’s grueling, often dangerous work, but Mark neither knows nor wants any other life. And, if a Day Boy proves himself worthy, the nightmarish, all-seeing Council of Teeth may choose to offer him a rare gift: the opportunity to forsake his humanity for monstrous power and near-immortality, like the Masters transformed before him.
But in the crackling heat of the Red …
With brilliantly evocative, hypnotic prose, Trent Jamieson crafts a coming-of-age, elevated horror story about a headstrong boy—and the monstrous vampire who taught him to be a man.
The Masters, dreadful and severe, rule the Red City and the lands far beyond it. By night, they politic and feast, drinking from townsfolk resigned to their fates. By day, the Masters must rely on their human servants, their Day Boys, to fulfill their every need and carry out their will.
Mark is a Day Boy, practically raised by his Master, Dain. It’s grueling, often dangerous work, but Mark neither knows nor wants any other life. And, if a Day Boy proves himself worthy, the nightmarish, all-seeing Council of Teeth may choose to offer him a rare gift: the opportunity to forsake his humanity for monstrous power and near-immortality, like the Masters transformed before him.
But in the crackling heat of the Red City, widespread discontent among his fellow humans threatens to fracture Mark's allegiances. As manhood draws near, so too does the end of Mark's tenure as a Day Boy, and he cannot stay suspended between the worlds of man and Master for much longer.
DNF'd at 10%. Mind-numbingly slow and uneventful, with an impossibly bland narrator.
I recall Lisa L. Hannett writing about the Australian Gothic in Wide Open Fear, a piece for her column in This is Horror. Trent Jamieson is part of that cultural/ literary trend in Australian genre writing and his previous short works and his Death Works series make valuable contributions to a cohort of writers and writing that holds its own internationally.
Then comes Day Boy , which I think might be the finest book Trent Jamieson has written to date, and perhaps the finest articulation of Australian Gothic in a single novel yet. There’s elements of his Nightbound Land Series, the imagery and the tone, but its subtle and more powerful for that. There’s a strong voice (haunting in its poetry) that firmly pins you down to this nightmarish world and makes you believe.
DAIN SAYS WE fight to breathe. We fight to be born and forever after we’re all …
I recall Lisa L. Hannett writing about the Australian Gothic in Wide Open Fear, a piece for her column in This is Horror. Trent Jamieson is part of that cultural/ literary trend in Australian genre writing and his previous short works and his Death Works series make valuable contributions to a cohort of writers and writing that holds its own internationally.
Then comes Day Boy , which I think might be the finest book Trent Jamieson has written to date, and perhaps the finest articulation of Australian Gothic in a single novel yet. There’s elements of his Nightbound Land Series, the imagery and the tone, but its subtle and more powerful for that. There’s a strong voice (haunting in its poetry) that firmly pins you down to this nightmarish world and makes you believe.
DAIN SAYS WE fight to breathe. We fight to be born and forever after we’re all rage at the brevity of the world and its multitudes of cruelties. I’m not sure about that. But we fight. And we Day Boys fight like we’re men angry and sanguine. Little soldiers marking doors with chalk, sketching the seven-pointed Sun upon the wood. Working and walking, all strut and talk—until we fight. And then the talk doesn’t matter anymore.
Writing good, entertaining stories is difficult in itself, writing stories that work one subtler levels at the same time is a sign of craft and this book is a work of well honed crafting. You could say that Day Boy is a tale of post-apocalyptic Australia ruled by vampires as seen through the eyes of one of it’s yet- to-be masters and you would not be wrong but you’d be missing much: Jamieson’s artistry at bending well used genre tropes to his will, his explorations of relationships between fathers and sons (even if they are proxies), about the relationship or tension of living with the Australian environment (even in its post apocalyptic state) and about loving, losing and growing up.
It’s a work that the Australian Speculative Fiction community needs to notice not just because its a fine rendition of what one of our best writers is capable off, but of what can separate Australian writers from a homogeneity of genre tales internationally. I commend Text Publishing for publishing it, for recognising why it’s an important tale and for perhaps exposing it to a slightly different audience.
Buy it or borrow it. Just don’t miss it.
