Low Town
Rigus is the greatest city in the Thirteen Lands, a glittering metropolis of crystalline citadels and sumptuous manors, where gentlewomen hide delicate smiles behind silken sleeves and bored nobles settle affairs of honor with cold steel. But light casts shadow, and in the darkness of the spires the baseborn struggle, eeking out an existence amidst the cast-offs of their betters. This is Low Town, a sprawling warren of side streets and back alleys, of boarded up windows and false storefronts. Here the corner boys do a steady trade to the dead eyed and despairing, and a life can be bought with a clipped copper penny. Low Town is an ugly place, and its champion is an ugly man. A former war hero and intelligence agent, now a crime lord addicted to cheap violence and expensive narcotics, the Warden spends his days hustling for customers and protecting his turf, until the chance discovery of a murdered child sets him on a collision course with the life he'd left behind. As bodies bloat in the canal and winter buries the city, he plays a desperate game of deception, pitting the underworld powers against his former colleagues in the secret police, hoping to find the source of the evil
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The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
The Warden runs the slum of Low Town as a small-time drug dealer with a city of cops still angry at him. A child turns up dead near his patch. Reluctantly, he starts asking questions, and finding answers people will kill over.
Daniel Polansky's Low Town trilogy has three books: Low Town, Tomorrow, the Killing, and She Who Waits. The trilogy is complete.
Yes. Low Town is widely cited as a grimdark noir fantasy, blending Joe Abercrombie-style cynicism with hard-boiled detective genre. The protagonist is a former soldier turned drug dealer in the lowest neighborhood of an empire's capital.
Low Town was written by Daniel Polansky, published in 2011 by Doubleday.
Low Town is 368 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Low Town takes most readers 6 to 8 hours to finish.
Low Town is a standalone novel by Daniel Polansky, not part of a series.
Low Town is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
