Description: A shy young woman and her deeply unpleasant--and literally porcelain--sister fight for their inheritance, taking on an impossible array of enemies, including a chain-smoking demon crow, an unkillable assassin, and a secret clan of French sorceresses. In his newest adventure, World Fantasy and Shirley Jackson Award-winner Daryl Gregory (We Are All Completely Fine) delivers a dizzying, darkly funny, and surprisingly poignant romp through the horrors of sisterhood.
"Daryl Gregory's fecund imagination conjures up another winner out of porcelain, dark magic and twisted humor in this intoxicating brew of delicious mayhem."--Lavie Tidhar, author of The Three Coffin Problem Ruth Winslow is trying to save up enough money to finish college while looking after her sister, Isabel--who happens to be a haunted doll. When an accident severely damages Isabel's porcelain body, the sisters have to find the only woman who can fix her, the fearsome witch known as La Fabricante--the Dollmaker. The big problem? The Dollmaker also heads the French witch mafia called Le Clan des Sorcières. The sisters head to Marseille, where they take on Chiffon, a red-headed, unkillable assassin; a collection of angry, haunted dolls; plus a pair of demons--one a cigarette-smoking crow, the other a black cat--and their human familiars. Along the way, the sisters learn that they've been lied to their entire lives. Their mother wasn't just a homemaker who died in a car accident, she was a legendary enforcer in the Le Clan. While Ruth has to come out of her shell and deal with her own latent powers, Isabel has to grow up in a body that can't grow. Together they'll have to outwit and outfight everyone to claim their birthright.
Review Quotes: Advance Praise for The Porcelain Sisters
"You think you and your sibling have issues? Ruth Winslow simply cannot relate. Gregory's novel opens with Ruth, a 26-year-old woman working at a grocery store in New England, hoping to hook up with a man she met at a bar. The mood is ruined when Ruth's sister, Isabel, appears from out of nowhere and threatens to murder the man, who's spooked not just for the obvious reasons, but because Isabel is not so much a human being as a porcelain doll. The man flees, and Ruth and Isabel get into an intense argument that leads to Isabel being badly damaged in a fall. Ruth's attempts to find someone to repair her sister catches the notice of Isabel's maker, La Fabricante, who lives near Marseille, France, and is determined to get her hands on the doll; she enlists Chiffon, a sociopathic assassin, to travel to New England to find her. Meanwhile, Ruth and Isabel travel to France, hoping to get the doll fixed, initially unaware that their lives are in danger. There they encounter a cast of characters including a crow and a cat and their human familiars, who, with some others, are part of a clan of witches that Ruth and Isabel's late mother was once a part of. Things, somehow, get weirder from there. The perpetually exasperated Ruth and the pain-in-the-ass Isabel are memorable characters, and their banter will ring true to anyone who's had a sibling: 'You don't know what it's like to have a disability, ' Isabel says at one point, to which Ruth replies, 'Being a bitch is not a disability.' The plot is completely bananas, of course, but Gregory is such an engaging writer, the reader has little choice to buy in--and that's a good thing. This novel is creepy, hilarious, and just a lot of fun. Excellent storytelling from a writer with imagination to spare."--Kirkus "In Isabel Winslow, the porcelain person, brittle and bitter, Daryl Gregory has given us the most intriguing young misfit since Edward Scissorhands."
--James Morrow, author of Shambling Towards Hiroshima "Meg Elison uses satire to brilliantly poke fun at our oppressors in her searing science fiction novella."
--Reactor "Wild at heart and weird of soul. A fast and funny blast of witchcraft that's delightfully dark and fraught with painful family secrets."
--Josh Rountree, author of The Unkillable Frank Lightning "Daryl Gregory delivers the best of storytelling--the high suspense of thrillers, the laugh-out-loud moments and wild swings of comedy, the chills and bloody shocks of horror, and the poignancy and nuance of family dramas."
--Stephanie Feldman, author of Saturnalia "Daryl Gregory's fecund imagination conjures up another winner out of porcelain, dark magic and twisted humor, with creepy dolls, gory assassins, secret societies and one cigarette-smoking crow in this intoxicating brew of delicious mayhem!"
--Lavie Tidhar, author of The Three Coffin Problem "The Porcelain Sisters is fun, wicked, smart, Weird (capital is purposeful), and oddly but genuinely emotional....everything I've come to expect from Daryl Gregory, who should be one of your favorite writers, too."
--Paul Tremblay, author of Dead but Dreaming of Electric Sheep "While this is horror, it is also quite funny. I love Gregory's sense of humor."
--The Neverending TBR Praise for We Are All Completely Fine "[STARRED REVIEW] Dark, degenerate, and sublime."
--Publishers Weekly "Clever, and filled with the creeping dread of what's in the flickering shadow next to you and what's just around the corner that suffuses the best horror. I loved it."
--Ellen Datlow, editor of The Best Horror of the Year series "Charming and horrifying--you won't be able to stop reading it."
--Tim Powers "A labyrinth of a story, intricate as a spider's web--and like a spider's web, each piece informs the whole. Beautiful."
--Seanan McGuire On When We Were Real "An addictive thriller packed with winning characters and big, brilliant ideas."
--Lev Grossman On Revelator "A thing of beauty, brutal in the vein of Cormac McCarthy."
--New York Times On Spoonbenders "Spoonbenders is entertaining and moving--a perfect summer read."
--Charles Yu