Following the bold, ambitious statement of his debut novel XX was always going to be tricky, but with The Black Locomotive Rian Hughes has shown that he can turn his hand to a shorter, more focused story while retaining the same wild invention, visual flair and knack for combining different media that he displayed before. When the construction of a top-secret Crossrail extension is halted by the discovery of a strange buried structure which hints at a new understanding of London’s distant past, project manager Austin Arnold is called in to oversee proceedings, accompanied by the unusual presence of artist Lloyd Rutherford. Commissioned to document the Crossrail project, Rutherford is obsessed by his relationship with London and its architecture, and finds himself increasingly drawn to the mystery of the subterranean anomaly. When something wakes within the anomaly though, Austin has to turn to older, more reliable technology to ensure London’s safety.
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