If you are one of those people who like your books to have a definite starting point, a straightforward easy-to-follow plot, good-versus-evil characters and a complete resolution then don't even open this book. This book has none of those things, and, in my opinion, it is all the better for them.

Junko Cane works in an abattoir in Red Meadows. Death is always around him, the endless lines of animals being brought in for slaughter on a daily basis and the co-workers who give into to the despair - either becoming too careless around the equipment or choosing suicide over continuing to live their lives. Cane puts in day after day to support his wife and family, even scavenging items from the corpses of hanged men to earn a little extra.

Cane is desperately trying to escape his past, as a hired gun working for Krave Weaste, and give the best possible life to his family. Only Weaste wants him back.

This book is dark, seriously dark. This is a nightmare world. These characters live hard and desperate lives. The world they inhabit is ruined. It has the feel of a world recovering from an Armageddon. Red Meadows is surrounded by a seemingly endless desert of black glass, as though the result of an inferno. These wastelands are dangerous places populated by semi-savage cannibalistic tribes, degenerating back into an atavistic state.

This book is compelling. I cannot say I enjoyed it in the truest sense, I don't think this is the kind of book that you will truly enjoy. It's a little to disturbing for that. But it is a book I am very glad to have read. Williams prose is very evocative.

In such a short piece as this we are given a detailed feel of Junko Cane's life, work and world. Not one single person in this book is happy, all are struggling merely to exist. I have to admit to being glad that this is a novella. Okay, there is the fact that novellas are my favourite length for fiction. But far more important than that for me, is that to read a novel that is this unsettling would not be a pleasant experience. 300 pages as dark as this would be too much for me, 102 pages on the other hand is just about perfect.

Synopsis
Some nights you can hear screams rising up from The Eyes, the abattoir on New Cut Lane. Those screams belong to the animals queuing up to be slaughtered there. Well, most of them do...

The Eyes is a brutal place to work, let alone die. Many lives have been lost there over the years, sometimes due to faulty machinery, sometimes because of disease, and occasionally when the trapped animals turn on their executioners. But it remains the only employer for most of the people who live in and around the town of Red Meadows. The alternatives include alcohol, random violence and suicide. Some might say those were vastly more attractive. Junko Cane would disagree. Having clawed his way back from a grim life of gang warfare, he is happy with his job, despite the ogreish abattoir boss, Max Grappen. The work, though unpleasant and treacherous, puts food on the table for his wife and child. Life, such as it is, has its comforts.

The shadowy past that Junko has tried to leave behind won't give him up so easily, though. When he stumbles across Max Grappen's key card Junko's curiosity gets the better of him and he uses it to access the hidden world of his employer. But he is not the only person investigating Grappen's past. The enigmatic Boa Cleethe, injury analyst, is also suspicious of the abattoir chief. And Junko's nemesis, crime lord Krave Wheaste, is breathing down his neck.

What Junko and Boa discover together will not only put the wider population of Red Meadows into terrible danger, but will menace Junko's fragile family and expose the shocking, insane and murderous secrets of The Eyes.