Armistice is Lara Elena Donnelly’s second novel, sequel to last year’s disturbing and compelling Amberlough.

With a setting combining influences from Weimar Germany and 1920s London and New York, Amberlough focused on three characters during the rise to power of a fascist government in the federated nation-state of Gedda. Thoroughly compromised intelligence officer Cyril DePaul’s choices went a long way towards making the fascist “Ospie” coup go off without a hitch. Then there’s Aristide Makricosta, burlesque performer, Cyril’s lover, and a trader in drugs, arms and influence: his relationship with Cyril seems a matter of mutual business benefit until it’s too late for either of them to acknowledge the real love and affection—or for that to change the outcome. And last is Cordelia Lehane, a burlesque dancer and small-time crook who gets roped into Aristide’s and Cyril’s schemes and who ends Amberlough as a woman who’s found herself a bloody cause.

Armistice also focuses on three main characters. Two of them will already be familiar to readers of Amberlough: Aristides has survived to reach exile in Porachis, where he’s become a director in the nascent film industry. He’s gone clean, or so he tells himself, but the producer behind his films is involved in the kind of intrigue Aristide thought he left behind.

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