Something More Than Night

A Raymond Chandler-inspired murder mystery set in Thomas Aquinas’s vision of Heaven, replete with hard-drinking fallen angels, stubborn molls, flaming swords, and quantum cosmology.

Available everywhere, including a superbly narrated audio edition. Please support local book stores when possible. Learn more about SMTN at Shepherd.com.

Related Short Fiction

• “When God Sits in Your Lap,” Asimov’s Science Fiction (Sep./Oct. 2020). (My companion essay on the Asimov’s blog, Psychopomps and Two-Bit Keyhole Peepers, contains my thesis on why fallen angels and noir detectives are really two sides of the same coin.)
  • Reprinted in The Year’s Top Hard Science Fiction Stories 5 (2021)
  • Reprinted in The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, 2021 Edition (2022)

Hard-Boiled Slang Glossary

Does Bayliss’s patter have you doing the dipsy-doodle? Does writing your own noir pastiche have you feeling like a dumb onion? Check out the glossary I compiled while writing Something More Than Night. To my knowledge, it’s the most extensive — and only reverse-lookup — hard-boiled slang glossary freely available online.

Translations

Something More Than Night, ultra-specific period slang and all, has been translated into Italian. I don’t know how, but I am delighted nonetheless.

Rave Reviews

Both Kirkus and io9 listed Something More Than Night among the best books of 2013. It was also a shortlisted finalist for the 2014 Gaylactic Spectrum Award.

“Superlatives seem superfluous.  Instead… wow.  Just—wow.” —Kirkus (starred review)

“[A] brain-bending combo of angelic cosmogony, high-level physics, and meta-noir… The result is both dazzling and dark, and more than a little quirky.” —Kirkus, Best Books of 2013

“A tour de force… Tregillis solidifies his place as a brilliant voice in the genre.”—RT Book Reviews (4.5 stars, Top Pick)

“A beautiful homage to Chandler.” —Library Journal

“Addictively brilliant… Ian Tregillis’ Something More Than Night is one of those books that manages to be both clever and exciting—you want to pause to admire all the brilliant ideas he’s tossing around, but you have to keep turning pages to see how it’ll turn out…Thrilling as well as poignant.”—io9

“A masterwork.” —io9, The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of 2013

“With Milkweed, Tregillis showed himself to be a literary chameleon… Now, with Something More Than Night, he changes voice yet again, and with excellent effect.”—Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing

“It shouldn’t work, but it does.  And it is glorious to behold… [O]nce again, Tregillis has put most other authors to shame…You know what’s awesome? Something More Than Night by Ian Tregillis.”—Tor.com

“Evanescently poetic—really startingly beautiful in parts… [Tregillis] delivers completely, providing a tightly constructed fantasy that flings itself forward with style and substance.”—Albuquerque Alibi

“Ian Tregillis’s Something More Than Night is part tongue-in-cheek noir detective story, part ontological examination of the foundations of reality, ever so slightly and amusingly absurd, and dripping with lush, weird descriptions…Tregillis proves to be a skilled juggler…Part of the appeal of this book is how easy it is to let the language wash over you… [T]his is a hugely ambitious novel in both function and form. It takes a particularly deft touch to manage all the disparate elements here, but Tregillis doesn’t stop at ambitious; not only does he not shy away from difficult subjects like death and love and the afterlife, he takes them head on and recasts them so we see them anew.”—Strange Horizons

“Ian Tregillis’ writing is hypnotic and full of conflicting sensory images. A bizarre combination of crime noir, science fiction, and a crash course in physics, Something More Than Night is a hodgepodge of ideas and concepts that will confuse and delight readers…Something More Than Night is a charged and extremely eloquent read.” —Portland Book Review (4.5 stars)

“When it comes to the world [Tregillis] has created in this book, I can only boggle in amazement…  I am still just so in awe… As always, Ian Tregillis blows me away with his talent and inventive ideas.” —The Bibliosanctum

“Tregillis combines his incredible prose, and [a] stunningly complex world filled with unforgettable characters to create something new, nuanced, and different.  This book is impossible to put down, and is an incredibly fast mover…  Something More Than Night shows Tregillis at his finest.”—Bookworm Blues

“With the combination of a fascinating story, superior wit, and a traditional hard-boiled detective fiction plot swerve at the end, ‘Something More Than Night’ makes for an all-around great read.” —PopMythology.com

“Jaw-dropping prose… The story is deft, heartfelt, gloriously complicated even as it falls into the rhythms of classic noir… The stuff dreams are made of.” —F5paper.com

“This book.  This amazing, beautiful, brilliant book.   If you’re anything like me (a ravenous devourer of books), you have, in your lifetime of reading, come across That Book: the book that you would sell your [insert invaluable possession] to have written.  Not because it’s famous or because it would have made you lots of money, but because it is so exquisite that the mere thought that something so wonderful could have come out of your brain is enough to almost make you weep. For me, this is one of those books.” —Wanted Dead or Alive

“Something More Than Night is a big, bold fantasy novel that mixes medieval cosmology, noir and trippy, complex ideas on memory, death and (the absence of) God into a highly readable whole…Tregillis has an understated, graceful style, weaving grand cosmology, myth and a hardboiled gumshoe plot into a story full of narrative tension, gripping characters and imaginative set pieces that recalls Roger Zelazny or Neil Gaiman…Tregillis is a wonderful up-and-coming voice in the fantasy field who deserves wide readership.” —Shelf Awareness

“Absolutely brilliant.” —Fed on Peaches

“Something More Than Night is a great story, wait stop, no, it’s brilliant. This is the stuff you want to read. To start, the idea behind the story is interesting to say the least and the execution of the story makes it even more so. From the characters of Bayliss and Molly down to the dark tinged near future/post apocalytic feel that the world gives it’s one heavenly hell of a ride, where Ian Tregillis invites you on in a front row seat. I cant wait to see what kind off story Ian Tregillis will give us next, but I know that it will be a success.” — The Book Plank

“Tregillis is so good, his language just flows. I loved his reach-out-and-touch-it descriptions of memory and what I started to think of as the science of heaven. His prose made some of the sad passages (and there are a few), that much more poignant. Just be ready, though: there are a few surprises in this one that may make you exclaim out loud (I did, earning funny looks from my family). SOMETHING MORE THAN NIGHT is a complex, exquisite, wonderfully written book… If you like fantasy that’s a bit out of the box and a lot awesome (with enough noir seasoning to please a Hammett fan, to boot), SOMETHING MORE THAN NIGHT will make you a very happy reader, indeed.” — My Bookish Ways

“If you’re thirsty for pulp fiction flavored with angels and cosmic rays, then SOMETHING MORE THAN NIGHT by Ian Tregillis was written for you… Ian Tregillis bucks all the traditions… Readers looking for something new and challenging will love this book.” (10/10) — Fantasy Faction

“The world building is creative and unexpected and captures the imagination, particularly in the depictions of the afterlife and the beings there, but also with an Earth that isn’t quite like our own… The characterisation is also very well done, particularly with our second point of view character Molly… definitely worth giving a go…” — Shades of Sentience

“At the heart of SOMETHING MORE THAN NIGHT is a murder mystery that is an homage to the detective novels of the past that really works and is hard to put down… a satisfying conclusion… SOMETHING MORE THAN NIGHT is one of those books that is a rare find, it has a very unique voice and take on the celestial beings in heaven that you don’t see very often. The mystery found within is entertaining and the conclusion should not disappoint. Tregillis does a great job of shifting gears from his Alternative World War II series and gives us something pleasantly different. Recommended.’”— Speculative Book Review

“Tregillis’s version of heaven is unlike anything you’ve seen before, and his version of Earth somewhere in the year 2060 (the exact year is never made clear) is made quite believable by the fact that even though the world has changed in a few drastic ways, people still act like people.” — ABC Blog

“Fug me was this a great read. In one instant it is freakishly bizarre in the Angels realm and at once riveting as we follow our hero’s through the Mundane (earthly) realm. This novel has it all; characters so bizarre you have to cast your creative imaginings to a place seldom visited coupled with alien thought processes, compelling humanistic situations/ characters, impeccable story-line development, creative insight into machinating minds of Angels and humans, and above all this hilarity in the guise of cryptic witticisms embedded in the antiquated verbiage of the 1920′s.” — Koeur’s Book Reviews

“A highly enjoyable romp, very recommended if you want your mind twisted a bit.” — The Ghostworks

“SOMETHING MORE THAN NIGHT is undoubtedly one of the best murder mysteries published in 2013.” — Crazy For Books

“Tregillis writes with elegant prose…” — Odd Engine

“Bayliss entertained me. I identified with Molly’s plight and perspective. The vocabulary was delicious… this book is much, much better than a lot of what’s out on the bookseller shelves right now.” — Summer Reading Project

“Science fiction readers that like their fiction heavy on the science will love this but take the longest to warm up to it. Readers that can revel in the play of language will get sucked in even if they don’t fully appreciate quantum mechanics and neutrinos. There really is a lot to love here.” — MentatJack

“SOMETHING MORE THAN NIGHT is a great success. Tregillis slyly uses two seemingly disparate strands, hardboiled detective fiction and angels, to weave a surprisingly coherent whole. The story, both the human and angelic parts, is compelling, and the prose, despite my few quibbles above, is a joy to read. Highly recommended.” — Books, Brains and Beer