City of Stairs
City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I won this from a goodreads giveaway which in no way influenced my review. In fact, for a while I thought I was going to be a bit sad that I had won because I was expecting more mystery and instead it was heavy on politics. Oh, how I hate politics (and present tense narratives). Why? Because part of the cover blurb read "She is one of her country's most accomplished spies, dispatched to catch a murderer.' Also it promised dead gods that might not all be dead.
But I'm glad I didn't know it was heavy on the politics because I would have passed on a story I enjoyed quite a bit. At first, I wasn't immediately sucked in because, hey politics. The first seventy odd pages are...I don't want to say slow since it has a negative connotation. How about leisurely? The dense layers of this world's history are very slowly peeled back as are the layers of Shara's personal history.
Shara, a Saypurian, heads to Bulikov, once a city of gods, to unearth the killer of her friend, the historian,Eferm. She half expects to be called off by her highly placed aunt, Vinya, but she is allowed to investigate. And seriously it takes a while for the story to kick into high gear (once you get about 200 pages in there's no stopping the thing). We learn about Saypur and the Continent where Bulikov is. There were Divinities and the Continent kept Saypur in a slave state until not quite a hundred years ago when the Kaj led the way, killing the old gods and decimating the Continent, especially Bulikov. Turn about is fair play and now Saypur treats them like hell, forbidding their religion OR their rebuilding.
Shara, like Eferm, loves the history of the gods (even mentioning them is against the law). She even had a Continental lover, Vo, in school and she is less excited to see him again. And he's right there in the forefront because he's part of the last wealthy Continentals and is an opponent of Wicklov, a town father and staunch believer in Kolkan who as we learn, was not a kind god, or even that sane. But they had Saypurians (dark skinned, 'mud people') or women that dare to show skin, you know, the normal repressive religious extremism. You keep rooting he bites it badly.
Shara is highly intelligent, backed by Colonel Mugalesh (the lady governor and war hero assigned to watch over Bulikov) and Sigurd. Brent Weeks, another fantasy bestseller, has a bit of back cover praise about Sigurd, promising me I'd love him. Well, it did take a while, but I most assuredly did. Sigurd is Shara's muscle, a Dreyling (think Viking). At first he seems like nothing more than just that, dumb muscle but he is so much more. And I know some women get all bent about having a male guardian but here it works. Shara is a scholar and spy but in her own words weighs 90 pounds. She's not going to be much in a fight but she doesn't have to be. She just has to point Mugalesh and Sigurd at it.
Her investigation takes her into Vo's orbit and into the remnants of the miraculous holy items, some of which still have their magic. It takes over four hundred pages to get to the satisfying ending. I really enjoyed Shara and Sigurd. Even the politics ended up believable and fascinating in their way. The one thing that bugged me was the cover art which made me think this was more SF than fantasy and I'm not sure why. I think it's because the city looks more modern than what I pictured it to be. I'm thinking turn of the 20th century tech. But that is a minor quibble. This is well worth your time.
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