City of Dreams & Nightmare (City of a Hundred Rows, 1)

They call it "The City of a Hundred Rows." The ancient city of Thaiburley is a vast, multi-tiered metropolis. The poor live in the City Below and demons are said to dwell in the Upper Heights. Having witnessed a murder in a part of the city he should never have been in, street thief Tom has to run for his life. Down through the vast city he is pursued by sky-borne assassins, sinister Kite Guards, and agents of a darker force intent on destabilisingthe whole city. His only ally is Kat, a renegade like him, but she has secrets of her own...Ian’s love of science fiction began while he was still at school, manifesting itself when he produced an SF murder mystery as homework after being set the essay title “The Language of Shakespeare”, much to the bemusement of his English teacher. Also while at school, Ian was awarded The Lord Mayor’s Prize for English, in a competition open to all the schools in London. His first published stories appeared in the late 1980s, but it was not until the early 2000s that he began to pursue writing with any seriousness, joining the Northampton SF Writers Group in 2004 after being introduced to its chairman, Ian Watson.