DJ Daniels’s first novel What the Dead Said (2012) was an odd little mystery set in 2021 Sydney, Australia where ghosts are everywhere, everyone can see them, and a hapless member of the Apparitions Group deals with living and dead underworld figures, an eccentric inventor and his robot creation, and an otherworldly plot to open the gateway between the living and the dead. The back cover text of her new novel Green Jay and Crow caught my eye on my bi-weekly trip tp B&N (“The half-forgotten streets of Barlewin… are a good place to hide: among the aliens and the couriers, the robots and the doubles, where everyone has secrets”), and I brought it home with me.

In his December book launch column at the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog, Joel Cunningham gives it an enthusiastic rec.

Daniels’ novel earns its comparisons to Philip K. Dick: weird, difficult, and occasionally obscure… In the city of Barlewin, Kern Bromley is a human known as Crow, tasked with delivering a time-locked box to a dangerous criminal. Crow becomes linked to the box and begins jumping to alternate realities, meeting himself and glimpsing multiple possible realities. Eva, the Green Jay, is an artificial body double printed from plant matter. Eva lives in the memories of her creator, and should have disintegrated long ago, but is still struggling to find her way into reality, and has managed to remain in one piece through the assistance of a pair of robots named Felix and Oscar (the Chemical Conjurers)… This is a story that explores what it means to be real, to be human — and to be neither.

Green Jay and Crow was published by Abaddon on December 11, 2018. It is 338 pages, priced at $9.99 in paperback and $5.99 in digital formats. The cover is by Pye Parr. See all our recent New Treasures here.