The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter

by Brent Hayward

The city is crumbling . . . . Clouds over Nowy Solum have not parted in a hundred years. Gods have deserted their temples. In the last days of a dying city, the decadent chatelaine chooses a forbidden lover, separating twin outcasts and setting them on independent trajectories that might finally bring down the palace. Then, screaming from the skies, a lone god reappears and a limbless prophet is carried through South Gate, into Nowy Solum, with a message for all: beyond the city, something ancient and monumental has come awake.

Reviews - What's Being Said About Brent Hayward & The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter

Beautifully written and morally ambivalent, this complex tale will appeal to readers of Gene Wolfe and China Miéville.
–Publishers Weekly (starred review)

[Brent Hayward]'s second novel combines elegant writing with moral ambiguity and an impressive array of grotesque characters.
–Locus

By turns surreal, macabre and stunningly violent, The Fecund’s Melancholy Daughter is dreamlike in its strangeness and complexity. Like a dream, it is difficult to define and difficult to shake. The imagery lingers like archetypes dredged up from the sleeping mind.
–Mark D. Dunn, The Globe and Mail

Hayward’s tale launches head-first into the puzzling dark fantasy world that he has so intrinsically created here. Like a Salvador Dalí masterpiece transposed into words
–Chris Hall, DLS Reviews

Despite the fact that I liked it very much and that so much about author Hayward’s use of language is appealing, I’m still not totally sure I understand the story and what it was meant to mean. A part of me wonders if that, too, is not the point . . . . The Fecund’s Melancholy Daughter is a thoughtful, if not entirely satisfying, read and Hayward has written another book (after his debut: 2008’s Filaria) worthy of asking questions about.
–David Middleton, January Magazine

The character development is excellent and is never overdone . . . . There is nothing predictable or cliché here. The Fecund’s Melancholy Daughter is a wonderful and entertaining read.
–Colleen Wanglund, The Horror Fiction Review

The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter is a very effective piece of storytelling, but the story it tells is an unconventional one . . . [t]hose willing to engage with the novel on its terms will find this to be an intriguing and well-written fantasy from a very promising author.
–Matt Hilliard, Strange Horizons