Game of Cages: A Twenty Palaces Novel »

Harry Connolly spent two years writing his first novel, Child of Fire. He has held a variety of jobs in the past, from customer service to landscaping to stay-at-home dad. He lives in Seattle.

A SECRET HIGH-STAKES AUCTION
 
As a wealthy few gather to bid on a predator capable of destroying all life on earth, the sorcerers of the Twenty Palace Society mobilize to stop them. Caught up in the scramble is Ray Lilly, the lowest of the low in the society—an ex–car thief and the expendable assistant of a powerful sorcerer. Ray possesses exactly one spell to his name, along with a strong left hook. But when he arrives in the small town in the North Cascades where the bidding is to take place, the predator has escaped and the society’s most powerful enemies are desperate to recapture it. All Ray has to do is survive until help arrives. But it may already be too late.

Publishers Weekly

Connolly fulfills and sustains the promise of his 2009 rural noir debut, Child of Fire, with this thoughtful Lovecraftian sequel. Twenty Palace Society member Catherine Little, a lethal sorcerer committed to keeping supernatural entities and magic out of the possession of anyone but members of the society, contacts ex-convict Ray Lilly at his mundane supermarket job and recruits him to assist her with an emergency situation. Ray's actions are supposed to be limited to assisting his assigned peer, but an interdimensional predator has escaped and the society needs all the help it can get. Connolly doesn't shy away from tackling big philosophical issues--whether good ends justify evil means, how many civilian deaths can be justified in the pursuit of creatures that can destroy the world--amid gory action scenes and plenty of rapid-fire sardonic dialogue. (Sept.)