Sixty-One Nails

Spinning British folklore and history into a one-step-over-from-reality vision of the streets underneath London, Shevdon's debut introduces the supernatural Feyre and their complex relationship with the human half-breeds created to maintain the fertility of the dying Feyre races. Niall Petersen, renamed Rabbit by those who know true names have power, awakens from a heart attack and finds himself in the care of the mysterious Blackbird. His previously unknown Feyre heritage has puts him in the sights of the human-hating Untainted. It also makes him uniquely suited to defending the barriers keeping the Feyre from the human world. An impressively accessible hero, Niall anchors the reader on a journey of discovery that feels constantly off-balance but never jarring. Comparisons to Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere are both inevitable and erroneous; Shevdon's grittily believable, charmingly described underworld packs a dark punch all its own. (June)