Our very good friends at Angry Robot Books have treated us, this weekend, to the news that they’ve signed and confirmed the third book in Peter McLean’s Burned Man series*, Damnation. They’ve even got a synopsis ready (to prove it’s a real thing… check it out):
Shambolic demon-hunting hitman Don Drake is teetering on the edge of madness.
He is living rough in a sink estate in Scotland, far from his usual manor, doing cheap spells for even cheaper customers while fending off the local lowlifes.
With the Burned Man gradually driving him mad, Don meets with an ancient and mysterious tramp-slash-magician, with disastrous consequences. Now his old accomplices must step in to save Don from himself, before he damns himself for good.
Light on details, deep in mystery and full of promise: right? Yep, and that’s exactly how we like our noir styled fantasy. The previous books were dark, but we imagine this will be a Spider Man 3 style internal-struggle with even higher stakes than the previous two novels, Drake and Dominion. So, congrats to everyone involved because the first two books were awesome and if we’d not got to hear where Don got to next we’d be hiring him to do some damage to a certain Commissioning Editor or two.
When’s it out? Well, that’s the bad news… we’ve still got a while yet. May 2017 to be precise, but until then you can find Peter online at his website, on Twitter @petemc666 and on Facebook.
Oh, and I’m presuming you’ve bumped into Peter by now… he’s quite the regular on our Fantasy-Faction Facebook Group (I’m sure if he’d not discovered it, he’d be celebrating his 9th book by now… our community’s gain though 😀 ), but if not, here’s a bit about him:
Peter McLean was born near London in 1972, the son of a bank manager and an English teacher. He went to school in the shadow of Norwich Cathedral where he spent most of his time making up stories. By the time he left school this was probably the thing he was best at, alongside the Taoist kung fu he had begun studying since the age of 13.
He grew up in the Norwich alternative scene, alternating dingy nightclubs with studying martial arts and practical magic.
He has since grown up a bit, if not a lot, and now works in corporate data centre outsourcing for a major American multinational company. He is married to Diane and is still making up stories.
*Note that we used the word ‘series’. Rumour has it that there is going to be more books in this series… Lets see if Drake can end up with more outings than Dresden shall we? 🙂
Jennie Ivins
Richard Marpole