The Trials of Koli (Rampart Trilogy #2)

by M.R. Carey

When I try to imagine what it was like in the before-times, most often I think of a house. A house full of light, with curtains and furnishings in such rich colours it’s like being inside a picture when the paint’s still wet and shining. The people who live in that house are tall and beautiful, their skin so perfect you’d think they had lanterns burning inside them. The house loves them and cares for them. Whenever they want something, they reach out their hands and it’s there, the house having seen their need and provided for them. Except there’s so much plenty, they don’t have a word for want, or for need. They speak to each other in songs that are all of love and joy. But the people of those times made the firethrower too. And the cutter and the bolt gun. And the Challenger CR17-SA heavy armoured unit, which I had already talked to and was about to meet properly. They made weapons that could turn ambient molecules into bolts and bullets and incendiary liquids, harden the air into a blade that would cut through stone and turn a village the size of Mythen Rood into a hole in the ground in less time than it takes to clap your hands.