Friday Fiction: The Gutter Prayer

The Gutter Prayer is a fantastic novel of worldbuilding and tumultuous change. The debut from Gareth Hanrahan—an author best known for his many roleplaying credits, from The Persephone Extraction to The Pirates of Drinax—and much more besides, it opens with a prologue written in the second person that narrates a burglary upon the House of Law in the city of Guerdon. It gives a strange, almost impersonal point of view to the beginning of the novel, the identity of the narrator not quite clear, but oh so important as the events of the story reveal later. The burglary though is a failure, forcing its perpetrators, Carillon, an orphan newly returned to the city after years away as a refugee, Rat, a young Ghoul not wanting to join his kind below, and Spar, a Stoneman, cursed with a disease which causes him to ossify into stone, and ultimately die if he does not receive injections of the serum, alkahest, to flee. In the wake of an explosion they know nothing about, the trio splits up, chased by the Tallowmen, waxworks which keep going as long as their wick remains alight, created by the Alchemists Guild to help enforce the laws and keep the peace. That explosion and the identity of the narrator in the prologue set off a chain of events which reverberate throughout the rest of novel.

Guerdon stands at the heart of the novel, a fantasy-industrial city-port which remains neutral in the ongoing Godswar afflicting other nearby nations. Religious strife underlies its history though, religious freedom allowed in the city because the Church of the Kept Gods threw down the dark rule of the Black Iron Gods and their vile servants. In recent times, the influence of the Kept Gods has diminished as the power and influence of the Alchemists grew and turned Guerdon into the soot-strewn industrial powerhouse that it is today. In the narrow streets and through the warrens of the smugglers’ tunnels lurks the Brotherhood, the city’s thieves’ guild—of which the novel’s central trio are members—whilst below are stranger factions still. Both are Lovecraftian in nature, the Ghouls feeding upon the city’s dead lowered into corpse chutes by the Church of the Kept Gods, whilst the Crawling Ones, amorphous collective masses of worms which can take on humanoid shapes, plot for greater power and influence in the city above at the expense of the Ghouls.

Once past the prologue, the story switches back and forth between various character points of view, initially Carillon, Rat, and Spar, in turn providing different views of the city and thus nbuilding and building Guerdon. They counterpart each other, Carillon impulsive and impatient, Spar physically slowed into terminal patience, with the pragmatic Rat between them. Guerdon though, forms a character of its own as the author serves up one aspect of the city after another, often seeming to throw them away before moving onto the next, leaving the reader to wonder if he will ever return to explain or expand. The three central protagonists, plus Guerdon itself, are not the only characters given time in the spotlight. Carillon has a starchy cousin, Eladora, who provides a different perspective upon their extended family; the three are hunted by Jere, a thief taker with connections; and Aleena, foul-mouthed and weary, who as a Saint of the Kept Gods channels their power. Not all of the other characters in the novel are accorded such treatment and consequently, some are underwritten.

The Gutter Prayer is also a tale of responsibilities, each of the three central characters gaining them, often unwillingly, due to the events of the novel, in the case of Carillon coming to her as a result of the vents of the prologue. In turn, they pull each of the three away from their central friendship which is so strong at the beginning of the novel, especially as the pace of the book picks up and up as their stories and the book comes to a climax.

Most obviously, in terms of genre, with its guilds and gods, thieves and cults, The Gutter Prayer is a dark fantasy, and whilst the industrialisation of alchemy in Guerdon does push it towards the steampunk genre, the novel is neither pseudo-Victorian nor obsessed with mechanical technology. It is rather Dickensian in both its character and its griminess, but The Gutter Prayer is ultimately more of a horror story, and whilst the author’s depiction of the Crawling Ones and their servants is suitably Lovecraftian, the truly creepy creations in the novel are the Tallowmen and the Gullmen. The latter appear only a few times in the novel, but that is enough, because seagulls given arms and legs is not something that you want to be thinking about. The former though, are a constant presence and threat—chasing, watching, guarding, herding… Each is the facsimile in stretched wax of their former self, vaguely self-aware, but always knowing that if their wick is extinguished, then so is their soul.

Throughout it is interesting to see the author going through the process of world-building through the narrative rather than the construction we are used to seeing done via roleplaying supplements. Although there are mentions of the wider world and then just the one fantastic excursionary scene, the action of The Gutter Prayer is confined to Guerdon itself. As much as the city is brought to life, there is still very much left for the reader to wonder at and hope that the author returns to in later books. Were The Gutter Prayer a roleplaying supplement, then perhaps it would be a different matter. In terms roleplaying, any number of rules sets could be used to portray Guerdon and its inhabitants, for example, Into the Odd would work.

The Gutter Prayer is a fast-paced—sometimes too fast-paced as the reader tries to keep up—and grim and grimy dark fantasy. It evokes a wonderfully sooty and tarnished sense of place in Guerdon and explores it through a cast of engaging characters who face difficult choices and undergo often traumatic transitions. The Gutter Prayer is a great introduction to Guerdon and the Black Iron Legacy series, and an exciting and engaging debut novel.