City of Blades: Book Two of the Divine Cities Trilogy

I was actually a lot more into this book, which is the second in the series, than I was in the first. I think what did it for me were the characters. I sort of felt like last time, the characters were lists of attributes, but I think they made the leap this time into more complex people. I would still recommend reading the first book, because there is a lot of worldbuilding going on that forms a useful (and essential) background to what happens in this volume. Please note: There may be some minor spoilers for book one (City of Stairs) in this review. I'll try to keep them to a minimum. There is a lot of character overlap with book one, but the protagonist is different. This time, our main POV character is General Turyin Mulaghesh (this is a woman, if you're not familiar with book one). She spent much of book one pining for retirement on a faraway island, but when we meet her at the beginning of this book, we see retirement was not really agreeing with her. (We learn that this is a theme in her life.) There is also an issue with her length of service as it relates to her pension. So Shara (the heroine of book one, who is now Prime Minister) gets Mulaghesh to come back for a few more months. (This is a common practice, apparently.) Shara sends Mulaghesh to Voortyashtan, which was formerly the city associated with Voortya, the goddess of death. A lot is going on. A new substance has been discovered and there is a mining operation to recover more of it. A government employee who was investigating this new substance has gone missing. The harbor is being worked on by a Dreyling (think Nordic types if you want to compare to our world) company under the direction of Signe, one of the daughters of Sigurd (Shara's assistant from book one) and something secretive is going on there. I just like Mulaghesh better than Shara as a POV character, for some reason. She doesn't know everything, she isn't a young idealist, etc. (She does exhibit some idealism, and that becomes important later in the book.) Other characters have appropriate depth for the amount of page time they get. Sigurd we already know, but he is in a new role here and he is not entirely comfortable with it. Signe actually gets quite a lot of depth. Anyway, I really liked the characters here. Once again, the book starts out as a mystery, or at least partly so. It evolves into several mysteries -- who committed a series of grisly murders, who stole a bunch of explosives, is there anything Divine or otherwise suspicious about the substance being mined, who left evidence of performing what must have been a miracle in the mine (in this instance, "miracle" refers to a ritual associated with one of the Divinities designed to have a specific effect)? You do get the answers to these questions and more by the end of the book, and I think the answers are set up nicely and with sound bases in the earlier parts of the story (no deus ex machina, in other words). There are those who will argue that the plot is very similar to book one. They're not exactly wrong, but I found that it was a little bit different, and there is enough *else* going on that you don't always have time to think about that. Some of the themes are the same from book one. With the Divinities gone, Saypuri technology is expanding and taking over, even on the Continent, and magic or the Divine is receding. People have to deal with that, including cleverly using technology to overcome unexpected Divine problems. There is also a fair amount of racism. Natives are called "Shtanis" and there actually pretty much none of them in the story, only Saypuris and Dreylings. The characters we do follow view the "Shtanis" with suspicion or outright hostility and suspect them of all manner of horrible things. In a sense, it's payback -- the Continentals enslaved Saypuri folks not too many generations ago, and prejudice runs deep. (In the first book, our token Continental character was a member of the elite upper classes.) There is quite a lot of action, including a battle that seems fitting for the end of most books coming about 2/3 through this one. I thought the pacing was great, building naturally from a slower investigation (complete with roadblocks) to a frantic race to stop an apocalypse. Tone-wise, this is fairly bleak and dark. I am OK with that but I understand that it will not be for everyone. It seems a natural progression for the story the author wants to tell, though, and I think it is probably politically realistic. In the end, I thought characterization was much improved from book one. I like the small details that relate to the transition from a society of magic (essentially) to one of technology. I liked the relationship between Sigurd and his daughter. I liked the interrelatedness of all the mysteries and plotlines. I kept wanting to pick this up and read when I should have been doing other things. So, despite the similarities in plots of book 1 and book 2, overall I enjoyed this quite a lot.

There are some fantasy readers who just want swords and sorcery. And there are others who’ve read so much of that, and dwarves and elves and dragons and knights, that we appreciate attempts to do something new, to push the genre in different ways. Robert Jackson Bennett’s Divine Cities is good at this: deicide in an age of motorized vehicles, spies and military generals versus supernatural enemies, unmagical main characters, Kafka-esque bureaucracy and dry, modern humor all set his books apart from the run of the mill. In City of Blades, the second of the series, he also tries to get us away from the hero’s journey trope we find so often in fantasy, telling what’s essential a political mystery story (think Hunt for Red October) in a fantasy setting—or post-fantasy, you might call this, as the gods are dead. Only they’re not, really, which would be a cool reveal—except we saw it in the last book, and the mystery in this book depends on kind of forgetting that. Before we get into it, a few kudos: Bennett is a talented writer, and the prose and pacing draw you through the story regardless of whether the mystery really mystifies. He also has a knack for vibrant, unique characters, and for me they were the best part of the book. They didn’t manage to overcome its main flaw, though, which is that the driving interest of the story is a whodunit (on a grand political and divine scale), but we’re fed too much information to ever be surprised by the revelations the characters make. Instead of Wash’s ‘sudden but inevitable betrayal' (search youtube: Firefly Clip: This Land), the reveals just feel inevitable, which doesn’t make for good mystery reading. Without the curiosity, the struggle to stay just one step ahead of the detective (in this case an unhappily-retired military general), the story loses its drive, and I ended up frustrated sometimes that the characters weren’t seeing what Bennett made so obvious. Enjoying this review? Find more like it at topnewfantasy dot com! On the other end of Wash’s spectrum, there are some sudden but far from inevitable moments that felt, well, deus ex machina—unexplained visions, gods rising from the seas, etc.—that could have been great with a little foreshadowing, but instead feel highly coincidental in terms of the main character gaining needed clues to solve the mystery. All this to say City of Blades is not for everyone. For long-time fantasy readers looking to break out of the tropes, or lovers of City of Stairs wanting to return to the world with not that many changes, the book will work well. It’s also some great prose—but if you’re looking to be pulled into a surprising plot, an intriguing mystery, or an action-packed page turner, you may want to stick to your guns—er, swords.

What an interesting way to comment on our current political and social environment. All the while, pulling off a great thriller. Nice to have the continuity of familiar characters. What a fun read!

General Turyin Mulaghesh was done with working for the government. Or at least that's what she though. But suddenly she has been informed that she has more work to do before she can receive her full pension. Or at least that is the cover story she gives to those she meets. In truth, General Turyin has been sent by Prime Minister Shara to Voortyashtan to determine if a discovery is divine in nature or not. This built on the promise of this first book and delivered an even better reading experience! For me, General Turyin was a much more enjoyable protagonist than Shara was in the first book. I felt the General's was a much more complicated character whose internal demons made her a well developed personality. This depth of character coupled with the extraordinary pacing of the story make it a page turner that the reader will not be able to put down. I am really looking forward to the third installment in this series.

Segundo livro da trilogia divine cities. Com menos ação do que o primeiro, mas com um protagonista mais apaixonante. Para fãns de sci-fi e fantasia. Recomendo!

Diría incluso mejor que "City of Stairs". Los personajes absolutamente humanos... más que humanos: perfectamente perfilados, creíbles, débiles en su fuerza. Un viaje alrededor del alma, mucho menos "fantasy" de lo que se podría imaginar.

I particularly enjoyed the non-stereotype characters and the non-fairytale ending. Mr. Bennett has a smart, efficient and natural writing style that supports the believability of his characters and the storyline. At first I struggled a bit with his writing in present tense, but one gets used to this after a few pages. I would recommend , though not absolutely necessary, to read City of Stairs before reading this volume.

http://lynns-books.com/2016/01/25/cit... Unless there’s a new world order in the next 11 months City of Blades will undoubtedly be on my end of year ‘best of’ list. To be honest, I expected this to be good because all the books I’ve read by RJB have been good and I loved City of Stairs last year but this really is so very good. At the start of the story we are once again introduced to General Turyin Mulaghesh. She’s retired to a small ‘mediterranean’ feeling island and is enjoying her seclusion, particularly when she’s riling up the locals, until she’s rudely jolted out of her retirement by a request from Shara. So Turyin is sent to the City of Voortyashtan – apparently one of the last places in this world that anyone would want to go. Her mission is to try and discover what happened to Choudhry, a Saypuri agent who has gone missing in action. Before the blink Voortyashtan was home to the Goddess of death, war and destruction. It is now on the brink of becoming a successful seaport however not everyone is happy with the current status. It appears that work on creating a successful gateway is dredging up not just artifacts from the sea bottom but also strong emotions. On top of this brutal and ritualistic type murders are discovered across the island and Turyin is about to be pulled into a plot that not only conjures up the ghosts of her past but also poses a threat to the world in which she lives. The world building is once again outstanding. Voortyashtan is a difficult place to live to say the least. It seems to be under constant threat of retaliation from the unsecured interior districts. The port itself is protected by an army presence and an imposing fort but any travel further afield is dangerous and not to be lightly undertaken. There is a constant threat of subversive/guerrilla type action that makes any investigation into the goings on even more difficult. Personally I would recommend reading City of Stairs before picking this one up although I think you could probably jump on board with Blades and pick up the story fairly easily. Bennett has a way of gently easing you into the world and feeding you information in a very manageable way. So, whilst I would, of course, recommend reading City of Stairs first (partly because I enjoyed it so much partly because I think it gives a good grounding in the history of the Saypuri’s, Continentals and the Divinities that used to exist) I think this could be read as a standalone. I must admit that I was at first a little surprised that the author chose to continue this series using Turyin as the main character because Sigrud and Shara were firm favourites for most readers, myself included, but I must say not only does he pull it off but he does so with style and creates one of the most wonderfully complex, flawed, intelligent and easy to root for characters that I’ve read about for a while. I absolutely loved her. The power of good writing and a bit of creative genius, eh! The other characters who join Turyin along the way are Signe. Signe is another very enjoyable character to read about. She’s an engineering genius by all accounts and seems to be almost single handedly running the entire operation to create a successful seaport. On top of this Signe is Sigrud’s daughter and I can’t say she’s his biggest fan. She hasn’t really forgiven him for what she feels was his abandonment when she was still fairly young and given these feelings the fact that Sigrud makes an appearance during the second half of the book makes for interesting reading. Biswal is another character and something of an unwanted blast from Turyin’s past – this was a dark time in Turyin’s life and a period that has haunted her for many years. Biswal is now the commander at the fort and once again making his acquaintance is going to bring back painful memories. I can’t really say too much about the plot as it would just give things away. There’s definitely a ‘whodunnit’ type of feel to this book with Turyin investigating the disappearance of an agent until the plot opens up to reveal a much deeper threat. That being said, be aware that this isn’t one of those stories where tens of thousands march to war. It has a more confined feeling, which isn’t intended as a criticism, because Bennett manages to cram in battles, murders, Gods, mines, afterlifes, intrigue, politics, scheming and, well a lot more! It certainly has a different feeling from City of Stairs with much more focus on soldiering and serving which I suppose can be expected as we’re following Turyin. Such a clever device to use Turyin though as it allows Bennett to delve back into the past and reveal more of the history of this world. Overall, I was quite blown away by City of Stairs. The writing is wonderful, the story is intriguing the characters are excellent to follow, the ending, well, I’m just not going to go there, it’s sad, but also it has an amazing resolution and frankly it just leaves me wanting more. I don’t see how you could have a stronger recommendation than that. More, please, I want more.

It's a good read, and in its own way talks about the futility of war and the life of a soldier from a different perspective. General mulaghesh's character has been well depicted.