The Etched City - K.J. Bishop

Another bit of sci-fi by a woman... Honestly, I don't plan these series of a type of book. I literally grab the first 7 or eight books that look interesting. Maybe the library knows this and is organising things to make it turn out this way... Now I'm worried.

Anyway. The world's gone to bits, it is a bit Mad Max-esque, but lacking internal combustion engines. An accomplished healer and an accomplished killer, colleagues and grudgingly friends during the convoluted wars of years past, meet and head off to one of the remaining cities where they might be able to settle down for a bit. Adventures ensue until they get there; he (the killer) works as a bodyguard for a local warlord type; she works in a rundown hospital in a poor part of town.

Time passes, they don't see each other a lot, and things start getting really wierd - like a lotus flower growing out of some guy's navel - and the flower can't be pulled out.

The barriers between the mundane and the fanstastic seem to become increasingly porous as the book goes on; the let down is the ending which seems to suggest that no one knows quite what happened to the main characters - 'some say that, some say this'... I suppose it's a literary trick to prolong the engagement with the fanstastic beyond the end of the book; but it could just as easily be giving up on the tale and telling the reader that it could go either way.

Interesting read, though.