"A gifted storyteller whose utterly unique voice yet brings to mind the delightful humor of Pratchett, the piercing human insight of the Russian masters, and the wild creativity and adventurous style of our best contemporary speculative fiction writers, among whom I fully expect Mr. Bagaev to be named in short order."
"These stories are a breath of fresh air, they are the works of a real and rare talent and though they were borne out of a time of hysteria and apathy and copycat behaviour they are clear eyed, filled with life and completely unique."
"The Debut Project is an uproar. A firestorm of follies and fun prose. Vanya is the man to take a flamethrower to convention and puff the stuff of beauty from its ashes. I'm glad to witness his rise."
Every great invention needs a first victim.
Felix is a pacifist engineer whose inventions have a tendency to maim. Kolya is his long-suffering partner who’d rather not die for someone else’s idealism. Together, they owe a very large debt to a very dangerous man, the kind who sends his bodyguard Dullard to do the talking… and Dullard doesn’t talk much.
To survive, they’ll need to pull off their first real engineering job, keep their friend Nina’s tavern from going under, and avoid the attention of every criminal outfit in City N (Spoiler: they will fail miserably).
Set in a fairy-tale anarcho-capitalist city, “The Debut Project” is a satirical novella in the tradition of Gogol and Guy Ritchie: heist comedy, body horror, and love letter to the kind of trouble only good intentions can cause.
