For millenia, The Pastel City had been the sole centre of civilisation on an Earth despoiled and ruined by its own inhabitants: but now the coloured towers were charred and tottering, as two queens fought for supremacy, armed with the relics of a culture that had already destroyed the world once...
Tegeus-Cromis, the moody, introvert Lord of the Methven, left his seashore retreat to fight for the Young Queen against the barbaric hordes of the Old. He travelled and fought among the wasted deserts and dreaming marshes of Viriconium, only to find that the War of the Two Queens was merely a prelude to a vaster and more dangerous conflict...
Would the Empire fall? Who would halt the invincible automata of an ancient science, resurrected by the Old Queen to tear down the Pastel Towers? Could a poet, a braggart and a heroic dwarf halt the irresistible flow of Time and save the Empire from a destiny worse than barbarism...?
”So much better than other novels in its field that I believe it will in time become a favourite classic among readers of science fantasy.” – Michael Moorcock
”Harrison makes a tone poem of the far distant future where men and creatures which delight and terrify the imagination fight in the never-ceasing battle of good against evil.” – Philip José Farmer
Details updated August 13, 2021
M. John Harrison
Michael John Harrison (born 1945), who writes as M. John Harrison, is a British author and reviewer.
M. John Harrison has also written books with Jane Johnson under the joint pseudonym of Gabriel King.
Community Reviews & Rates
260 reviews
3593 posts
The Pastel City is an interesting, entertaining and readable science fiction book. I liked it, but it was perhaps a bit too simple. Although this book is a classic science fiction book, it's not as good as some similar books, but it's still worth reading.
