K.J. Bishop

Kirsten J. Bishop is an Australian writer and artist. In 2004, her first book, The Etched City, was nominated for a World Fantasy Award in the Best Novel  category.

Ashamoil, the etched city, survives in a crumbling world of degenerated civilisations in which rival warlords oversee businesses based on gun-running and slaving against a background of vast deserts and impenetrable tropical forests. Ancient canals, inhabited by giant snakes, run through jungles where tigers laze on the stones of forgotten temples. Seers, occultists, mediums and shamans exploit the fears and superstitions of Ashamoil's many inhabitants. Dreams and reality are indistinguishable. Landscape and imagery are as important to KJ Bishop's fantasy as character, but it's a measure of this Australian writer's talent that she is as comfortable with her protagonists as she is with visions and moral complexities.
The Etched City has all the vitality of a first novel and few of the vices. Any initial meagreness of plot is compensated for by a compelling atmosphere that has something in common with M John Harrison's Viriconium but more closely resembles JG Ballard's The Drowned World or The Drought. Like Ballard (or, indeed, Conrad), Bishop's images possess an authenticity drawn from the Pacific Rim.

Excerpt from The Etched City
There were no milestones in the Copper Country. Often a traveller could only measure the progress of a journey by the time it took to get from each spoiled or broken thing to the next: a half-day’s walk from a dry well to the muzzle of a cannon poking out of a sand-slope, two hours to reach the skeletons of a man and a mule. The land was losing its battle with time. Ancient and exhausted, it visited decrepitude on everything within its bounds, as though out of spleen.
In the south of the country, arid scrubby plains alternated with stretches of desert. One road crossed this region, connecting the infrequent hamlets and oases, following the line of a derelict stone wall built long ago by a warlord. Along it, at distant intervals, were the remains of watchtowers and small forts. The greater part of the wall and its fortifications lay in complete ruin, but occasional sections stood intact enough to provide shelter.

To read the full excerpt click here: http://www.fantasticmetropolis.com/i/etched/full/