Terrific, cool, original fantasy A young boy honed to be avengeful assassin grows up and ends up in group therapy with other people who were chosen or special but then abandomed or sidelined or supplanted and became unchosen. There's strange bright doors all over the city, phone calls from his dying mother, a planned visit by his all-powerful father, the recruitment of a revolutionary cadre, a missing shadow and huge and sinister quarantine camps. It's a terrific, extremely well-written novel with fantastic world-building.

Okay, when writing the above review I was dopey as hell, since I'd woken at about five, stuck an earphone in my ear and listened to the last few hours of the book. But actually I kept dozing off while listening, so therefore only actually had a series of auditory impressions picked up as I emerged from and sank back into the dozes. So I hadn't actually finished the book properly at all. I have now done so, and it is one of the best new things I've read in a while, and had me mulling over the difference between what they used to call 'urban fantasy' and what might be termed as a more literary 'social fiction fantasy.' The former, in my own personal and no doubt idiosyncratic definition, consists of psychic detectives and vampire hunters and secret paranormal spy agencies - all good fun - and the latter is about, well, more social stuff, about society, and people and history and class and how they all intermesh, and stuff. You can see I have thought long and deep about this, can't you? Oh well, that's what I was thinking listening to the smooth prose and intelligent exploration of interesting themes with fascinating characters and riveting plot. Superb narrator, too