REVIEW: Tomorrow, The Killing by Daniel Polansky
Last Updated on January 15, 2025
In Tomorrow, the Killing by Daniel Polansky (Low Town 2) an old general from the Warden’s days in The Great War asks the Warden to find his daughter in Low Town and return her to him. Naturally, things do not go as planned and the Warden’s conniving and manipulating of everyone around him kicks off a massive fight for power between rival gangs, veterans, the terrifying Black House, the local police, and quickly spreads to those he loves. After absolutely loving The Straight Razor Cure it took me way too long to get back into this trilogy, but I am so glad to have read this absolute grimdark masterpiece.
I love reading Polansky’s Warden, As he plies his trade in the shadows, applying pressure here, violence there, and pulling the strings of the city around him. His relationships with those he loves are hard to read at times, as the self-destructive nature that makes him so vicious in the streets, also makes him an incredibly hard person to love–and in the end, I always think there is a firm sliver of him that wants to be seen by those he thinks of as family. To be seen for what he sacrifices for them, and that, while he does so in his own rather horrible fashion, he does value them. A key example of this in Tomorrow, The Killing is the boy in his charge, Wren. Wren has the Art, but can’t control it yet, and is at risk of burning his brain out if he continues to self-teach and experiment. He needs schooling, but the Warden doesn’t want him in a Crown military school so that he doesn’t end up on the front lines somewhere, so he must look elsewhere, beyond the depths of Low Town and into somewhere more lawless. He always makes time to try to direct Wren on the right path to help him survive, but in doing so continuously damages the boy with a tough and oftentimes abusive affection, the results of which I’m assuming I’ll get to discover in book three, She Who Waits.
The relationship between the Warden and his best mate and fellow survivor of the Great War, Adolphus, is key to this story. Adolphus, the hulking hero of the front who held the line against the Dren single handed, is, in the eyes of the Warden, looking to relive his glory days as part of the Veterans’ Association protest marches. Adolphus more just seems like a soul who needs a home among those who know what he went through—but he’s also a soul who looks at what his best mate has become and doesn’t like it, while having to stomach it to fund the tavern he and his wife run. Throw into the mix a pretty epic secret twist between the two that we discover deep into the story, and there is so much to enjoy unpicking between the two.
Told in two timelines, we get the grit and desperation of the city and the people in it, accompanied with the sheer horror of the war fifteen years prior. “The war” being WW1 if rifles were replaced with pikes and short swords while artillery shells and brutal magic salvoes rearranged the landscape around the trenches and turned men into puffs of red. This helps us with the “why” of the characters in the current timeline, providing key insights into the Warden, who otherwise might get lost a bit as a character amongst the snark and cynicism.
Overarchingly, Tomorrow, The Killing isn’t just a gang story, it’s another brilliant study into what war does to the survivors and what happens when you throw a quarter million of those survivors back into society. Some band together in shared horror and an inability to properly integrate back into society. Others don’t make it very long. Some try to get on with life and find something to bring meaning back into their lives, while others find purpose in crime. Very few, become creatures like the Warden.
Daniel Polansky is one of my favourite living authors. Between the Low Town series, novellas The Builders and The Seventh Perfection, novels such as Tomorrow’s Children, Those Above and Those Below, and his short works (such as Sticks and Stones in GdM#32 and King for a Day in The King Must Fall) I just can’t get enough. His voice is merciless, cynical, funny, unrelenting, and full of dark heart. His writing is crisp and impeccable. His stories cannot be put down.
Swimming in grit, snark, violence, and featuring one of the best character relationships I’ve had the pleasure of reading amongst all of it, Tomorrow The Killing by Daniel Polansky is utterly fucking un-put-downable. I’m immediately off to read the final book in the Low Town trilogy, She Who Waits.
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