Day Boy - by Trent Jamieson (Paperback)

About the Book

"First published in 2015 by Text Publishing (Melbourne, Australia)"--Title page verso.

Book Synopsis

Winner of the Aurealis Awards for Best Fantasy and Best Horror Novel

With brilliantly evocative, hypnotic prose, Trent Jamieson crafts a coming-of-age, elevated horror story about a headstrong boy--and the monstrous vampire who taught him to be a man.

The Masters, dreadful and severe, rule the Red City and the lands far beyond it. By night, they politic and feast, drinking from townsfolk resigned to their fates. By day, the Masters must rely on their human servants, their Day Boys, to fulfill their every need and carry out their will.

Mark is a Day Boy, practically raised by his Master, Dain. It's grueling, often dangerous work, but Mark neither knows nor wants any other life. And, if a Day Boy proves himself worthy, the nightmarish, all-seeing Council of Teeth may choose to offer him a rare gift: the opportunity to forsake his humanity for monstrous power and near-immortality, like the Masters transformed before him.

But in the crackling heat of the Red City, widespread discontent among his fellow humans threatens to fracture Mark's allegiances. As manhood draws near, so too does the end of Mark's tenure as a Day Boy, and he cannot stay suspended between the worlds of man and Master for much longer.

"Poetic and meditative--at times frightening, visceral and bloody--this is a dark journey worth making." --Aurealis

Review Quotes

"At the fingertips of a gifted writer there will always be new and interesting takes on the vampire tale and happily, Day Boy is one of them. . . . At times touching, at times frightening, and always interesting. The ideas are fresh and new, and by the end of the novel there is still so much left to be said." --Melbourne Review of Books

"Jamieson has kept all of the central facets of vampire mythology while fashioning something new and often riveting. Poetic and meditative--at times frightening, visceral and bloody--this is a dark journey worth making." --Aurealis

"Dry, rolling heat flows from the page in waves of long days and even longer nights. . . . A poetic story of humanity, of monsters living in the Shadow of the Mountain, bitter cold and open to the burning of the clear night sky." --Fantasy Book Review

"A beautifully written and surprisingly tender novel about fathers and sons, and what it may mean to become a man." --Good Reading

About the Author

Trent Jamieson is a multi-award winning Australian novelist and short story writer. He is the author of Day Boy, The Stone Road, the Death Works series, and the Nightbound Land duology. His picture book The Giant and the Sea won the 2021 Environment Award for Children's Literature. When he's not writing, Trent works as a bookseller at Avid Reader in Brisbane.