City of Miracles, by Robert Jackson Bennett
Second paragraph of third chapter:“Pangyui writes that, in some ancient texts, miracles were described not as rules or devices but as organisms, as if Saint So-and-So’s Magic Feet or whatever they called it was just a fish in a vast sea of them. As if some miracles had minds of their own.”
Third in a trilogy which was up for the Hugo for Best Series in 2018. I enjoyed the first, enjoyed the second and enjoyed this one too. Thirteen years on from the previous volume, a major character gets killed off in the first chapter and then her friend spends the rest of the book scrambling to work out what is going on and then whether he can prevent the End Of The World. There is a particularly vivid sequence of a fight on a super-ski lift, which would make an excellent film in itself. Very often books with magic annoy me when the sorcery is just enough to take the plot forward; I felt that Bennett plays it fair here and that the characters had little more information than the readers about what was going on - which goes for the whole trilogy really. Warmly recommended, and hope to see more from this writer. You can get it here.
This was my top unread book acquired in 2018. Next on that pile is The Idiot Brain: A Neuroscientist Explains What Your Head is Really Up To, by Dean Burnett.
Third in a trilogy which was up for the Hugo for Best Series in 2018. I enjoyed the first, enjoyed the second and enjoyed this one too. Thirteen years on from the previous volume, a major character gets killed off in the first chapter and then her friend spends the rest of the book scrambling to work out what is going on and then whether he can prevent the End Of The World. There is a particularly vivid sequence of a fight on a super-ski lift, which would make an excellent film in itself. Very often books with magic annoy me when the sorcery is just enough to take the plot forward; I felt that Bennett plays it fair here and that the characters had little more information than the readers about what was going on - which goes for the whole trilogy really. Warmly recommended, and hope to see more from this writer. You can get it here.
This was my top unread book acquired in 2018. Next on that pile is The Idiot Brain: A Neuroscientist Explains What Your Head is Really Up To, by Dean Burnett.