FORGOTTEN BOOK: JOE GOLEM AND THE DROWNING CITY

 Joe Golem and the Drowning City by Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden  (2012)

In an alternate timeline, Lower Manhattan was devastated in 1925 by an earthquake and the rising ocean.  Now New York City is divided into two parts:  The Lower end, inundated by water rising to almost three stories, and the Upper end, which survived the catastrophe and whose residents enjoy a plush and sybaritic lifestyle.  Those who survive in the Drowning City eke out a desperate living and are often prey to others.  The rising waters have also brought forth a steampunk age, filled with sorcery, magic, and supernatural happenings.

Fast forward many years. Felix Orlov the Conjurer, now incredibly old, makes his living by offering seances.  The seances are, more often than not, the real thing for Felix can actually communicate with the dead.  His assistant is Molly, a fourteen-year-old waif whom he had rescued two years before.  Felix has provided the one safe haven that Molly ever knew and she loves him like a father.  Then one day, during a seance with the Mendehlsons in which he was trying to reach their con David, Felix froze and became spasmatic; he began chanting with a phlegmy laugh, his skin began to hiss and wispy smoke came out of his body.  And then it began to get really creepy.  Suddenly the door to the room burst open.  Metal canisters were hurled onto the floor, releasing some sort of gas. Strange men in wetsuits and buglike gas masks entered.  One twisted Mrs. Mendehlson's head, snapping the bone.  Molly could not see what happened to the woman's husband, but she knew that he had been killed.  Felix shoved Molly toward safety, and she ran, pursued by one of the "gasmen."  The others took Felix with them and left.  Molly knew her way around the Drowned City from her days when she lived on the street.  she ran and dodged and tried to hide, but the gasman just kept coming for her.  Then a huge man -- a complete stranger -- appeared before her and spoke her name.  The man said his name was Joe and he placed himself between Molly and the charging gasman.  Joe's strength was enormous, and as powerful as the gas man was, he was no match for Joe, who tore the gasman's wetsuit, releasing...something.  The suit deflated and there remained only something small moving inside of it.  Joe tore the gasman's arm off.  Something escaped form the suit and slid into the water.

Molly had no idea what was going on but she knew that she could trust this giant, Joe.  Joe brought her to meet Simon Church, and elderly detective from the turn of the Twentieth Century, kept alive by various mechanical devices grafted to his body.  Church was a world-famous detective whose exploits published in the magazines of the day made him a world-renown character, like Sherlock Holmes.  Like Holmes, many thought Simon Church was fictional.  Over the years, Church had had many assistants, all of whom were now dead; the one exception was a man who had sacrificed himself in an occult manner to save Church -- that assistant vanished from the Earth, neither living or dead, doomed to spend eternity in nowhere.  For the past twenty years, Church's assistant has been Joe.

Joe remembers nothing of his life before hooking up with Church, although Joe sometimes has dreams of a time centuries ago in Poland, where Joe was a creature of stone, hunting and killing witches who preyed on the village folk.  Joe, it turns out, is a golem, whose long years of service has been rewarded by being turned into a flesh and blood man.

The ones who have captured Felix and tried to catch Molly turn out to be acolytes of Dr. Cocteau, Church's old nemesis, and a man steeped in arcane lore.  Felix, it turns out is the key to finding an powerful occult object known a Lector's Pentajulum.  The problem is no one knows exactly what the Pentajulum does or how it works, only that it is the most powerful and dangerous object in the world.  Cocteau wants the Pentajulum because he believes he can use it to open an interdimensional gateway to bring the Old Ones to Earth.  Church must stop Cocteau at any cost.  To do this, he must locate where Cocteau has brought Felix, so Molly and Joe go out on a quest...a quest that will bring them face to face with unimaginable horrors and death to many, a quest that will eventually result in the destruction of the rest of New York City, and that may mean the end of all life on Earth...

Ghosts and golems and changelings and monsters, oh my!  Mignola and Golden spin a marvelous tale of a strange and forbidden city during a strange and forbidden time.  A tale of heroism and valor and of bloody deeds.

Mike Mignola may be best known  for his comic book work and for creating Hellboy, the B.P. R.D. series, Abe Sapian, and Lobster Johnson.  For this extravaganza, he has created more than 65 woodcuts that mesh perfectly with the story.  Christopher Golden is the best-selling author of the Shadows saga, the Body of Evidence series, the Ghosts of Albion series (with Amber Benson), the Ben Walker series, the Hidden Cities series (with Tim Lebbon), the Menagerie series (with Thomas E. Sniegnoski), the Prowlers series, the Bloodstained Oz series (with James A. Moore), the Hollow series (with Ford Lytle Gilmore), and the Secret Journeys of Jack London series (with Lebbon), along with many other books.  Golden is also a noted tie-writer and has written extensively in the Marvel Universe, the Hellboy Universe, the Buffyverse, among others.  Golden is also a comic book writer and a frequent anthologist.  Mignoli and Golden wrote an earlier Joe Golem adventure, Joe Golem and the Copper Girl.