The Blue Blazes: Out Now!

The Blue Blazes is now available!

Let’s just dispense with your procurement options:

Amazon

Amazon UK

B&N

Indiebound

The Story

Mookie Pearl is a Blazehead — a user of the mystical drug known as Cerulean, a drug whose high tears away the veil of normalcy and reveals all the horrors and pleasures of the Underworld and its ilk. And Mookie knows a thing or two about the Underworld: he’s a knee-breaking thug who works for the Organization, a criminal coalition of gangs and crime families who control all of New York City’s illicit activities. Mookie protects the criminal underworld’s Cerulean trade from the threats of the mythic and monstrous Underworld beneath their feet — from gobbos, snakefaces, trogbodies, rogue molemen, and human cultists driven mad by the labyrinth.

Mookie’s already rough life gets a whole lot rougher when his own teenage daughter Nora (AKA “Persephone”) takes a run at him and his business, trying to peel away part of the Blue trade for herself — in the process, helping to reveal a far more sinister plot that pits the denizens of the Great Below against the citizens of New York City.

Featuring: Family drama, action, fantasy, profanity, tender emotion, burgeoning love, Sandhog monster-hunters (Local 147 represent!), roller derby girl gangs, the dead folk of the subterranean town of Daisypusher, ancient god-worms (or are they worm-gods?), charcuterie, demon families, gobbos, trogbodies, snakefaces, half-and-halfs, milk spiders, cankerpedes, roach-rats, gelled wastes, mystical pigment drugs (Cerulean! Viridian! Vermilion! Ochre! Caput Mortuum!), and a zombie stunt driver on a Hell-bound four-wheeler.

Some Strange Combination Of: Hellboy, Sin City, Goodfellas, Dante, Lovecraft, Neverwhere

OH AND HEY LOOK A CONTEST

Read The First 50 Pages

 

 

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What Others Have Said

“The Blue Blazes is exactly my kind of supernatural mob crime novel: dark and visceral, with an everyman hero to root for and Lovecraftian god-horror to keep you awake at night… this is the good stuff, right here.” — Adam Christopher, author of Empire State and The Age Atomic

“There’s something gloriously unhinged about the crazy mix of fantasy, horror and crime-fic that is The Blue Blazes. It’s dark and darkly funny, full of outrageously gory scenes and larger-than-life characters.” — Tor.com

“This is gritty urban fantasy as it should be done. Wendig has once again pulled that inimitable magic out of the bag and created something splendidly unique. The action is so thick at times that you might need to check you’re still breathing, and the twists keep on coming. So much fun that, like the five occulted pigments, it should be illegal.” — This Is Horror

“Another thing is that Wendig makes Nora about more than her estranged relationship with her father. Female characters in SFF who can stand their own against their male counterparts, especially as integral characters, are sadly not as common as we’d like them to be. Which is where Nora steps in, and challenges all perceptions about who and what she is. As I’ve said, within the narrative, she’s an actor and not a reactor, and for me this makes her into a very vital character, someone who packs a wallop of character-agency. Her scenes in The Blue Blazes are some of the highlights of the novel.” — Shadowhawk, The Founding Fields

“Wendig writes with blunt force choreography, full of brutally disturbing descriptions, and wrecking ball action. Noir sensibilities are in full force here, and Wendig uses them brilliantly to craft a portrait of a New York that is at the same time instantly recognizable and disturbingly alien.” — The 52 Review

“Seamlessly blending urban fantasy, crime noir and artisanal butchery, The Blue Blazes is one of the best books I’ve read in a very long time. It’s an exciting twist on the normal urban fantasy tropes, one that breathes some new life into Urban Fantasy’s blood-drinking corpse.” — BuzzyMag

“The Blue Blazes is a fun, fast-paced novel that blends the best of noir, a Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual, and melodrama into something special.” — Fantasy Faction

“In the end, The Blue Blazes is a blast, an awesome, smartly written novel that far exceeds the sum of its parts and transcends those things with which it is similar to be an excellent novel on its own merits. Sure to end up on my favorite reads list at the end of this year.” — SFFWorld

“Suffice it to say that Chuck Wendig has moved from one of the many Un-Heard-Of-So-Don’t-Care seats in the back of my brain to occupying a spot in the far less populated Important-Writers section up front.” — Elf-Machines From Hyperspace

“The world of The Blue Blazes is fantastic – think Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere written as a mob book – and as Wendig slowly reveals more and more of the demonic underbelly of New York you can’t help but go along for the ride. At turns creepy and horrifying (but always entertaining), The Blue Blazes is a must-read. I’m kicking myself for not checking out Wendig’s work before now. Don’t make the same mistake I did.” — All Things Urban Fantasy

“The Blue Blazes shows us Hell in Technicolor, and each pigment jumps straight off the page in High Definition Wendig-Vision. It’s brilliant stuff, and I just hope there’s more to come from Mookie Pearl and the five pigments of the Underworld.” — Wilders Book Reviews

“In a credit to Wendig for how well he portrays this dysfunctional little family unit, I found myself hooked on their relationship and biting my nails by the end of the story, eager to find out what becomes of them.” — Over The Effing Rainbow