Derryl Murphy's ChiZine Publications novel Napier's Bones, a mathematical dark fantasy, was a nominee for the Aurora Award. Some of his short fiction was compiled in the two collections included here, and he also co-wrote, with William Shunn, the novella Cast a Cold Eye. His new novel has just been handed off to his agent, where it is currently cooling its heels. Derryl lives in Saskatoon with his wife and sometimes his youngest son, who is supposed to be away studying at university but this whole pandemic thing might have messed that up.

Napier's Bones by Derryl Murphy

What if, in a world where mathematics could be magic, the thing you desired most was also trying to kill you?

Dom is a numerate, someone able to see and control numbers and use them as a form of magic. While seeking a mathematical item of immense power that has only been whispered about, it all goes south for Dom, and he finds himself on the run across three countries on two continents, with two unlikely companions in tow and a numerate of unfathomable strength hot on his tail. Along the way are giant creatures of stone and earth, statues come alive, numerical wonders cast over hundreds of years, and the very real possibility that he won't make it out of this alive. And both of his companions have secrets so deep that even they aren't aware of them, and one of those secrets could make for a seismic shift in how Dom and all other numerates see and interact with the world.

 

REVIEWS

  • "Plunk us both down in the same imaginary world and [Murphy will] be wandering its outback like a native while I'm still standing in the bus station, face scrunched up over the tourist map, trying to make sense of the grid references."

    – Peter Watts, author of Blindsight

  • "In Murphy's version of reality, magic is in the numbers, and the details. Present-day action spins out in surprising directions, touching on history, poetry, mathematics, and myth. I was reminded of Tim Powers at times, but this is Powers on speed, weird, wonderful, and fast. Stock up on snacks: you'll be reading this book in a single sitting."

    – Holly Phillips, author of The Engine’s Child

  • "Derryl Murphy is one cool writer: smart as a whip, funny, insightful, and always engaging. He's a master storyteller and a brilliant stylist."

    – Robert J. Sawyer, author of The WWW Trilogy
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

Dom paused at the bottom of the hill, took a swig of warm water and wiped the sweat from his forehead. Above him the sun blasted down through the hard blue sky, harsh and yellow and hotter than anything he'd ever felt. Below him the desert sand and red rock told him nothing he needed to know, so he closed his eyes and rubbed the baseball in his pocket, muttering multiplication tables under his breath as he traced the stitching.

Fire streaked across the darkness inside his eyelids, slowly refining itself to a sequence of numbers and formulae. He opened his eyes and watched the direction they pointed, caught the path before they faded away in the angry, greedy light; up the hill, switching back and forth to handle the steep incline.

He climbed, cursing the heat, cursing his lack of preparedness, cursing the luck that had led his search to here in the Utah desert. Near the top he stopped and took another swallow of water, trying hard to conserve the tiny amount that remained in the bottle, wondering if he was going to be forced to turn back before he reached his target.

There was a rustling sound from overhead, and he looked up to see a series of logarithms flapping by like wiry bats, dipping and diving through the air before breaking up into their constituent numbers and, with nothing left to hold them together, quickly fading away. There were more sounds now, a distant clicking that quickly segued into a great ripping and grinding sound, like a giant's zipper that somehow controlled all seismic activity, and then all colour above Dom was washed away, formulae and numbers and sequences exploding across the dome of the sky, sure sign of backlash of some sort. Dom flashed his fingers, frantically counting primes in ascending order, using binary as a shorthand, hoping to hell that it would be enough to keep attention from being fixed on him.

It wasn't. A grey mass, pulsing with unclear integers, fuzzy and indistinct against the now-screaming numbers in the sky above, launched itself over the edge of the ridge, dropped through the air and pierced his body. Dom was flung backwards, blackness overtaking him, his last awareness of the rumbling and shrieking suddenly cutting off, and the pure Silence that for one sudden moment ruled the world around him.