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cimoreneRead City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett, a finalist for the 2015 World Fantasy Award. A fantasy world featuring two ethnic groups, one based on the slavic and one based on the indic (but in a much different world with much different geography), in a vivid and meticulous setting, this book seemed really fun from the first two chapters, but later developed a couple of flaws. Specifically, at one point I tweeted that when the female protagonist started being melodramatically nostalgic about her past love affair with a man who later turned out to be gay, I thought 'Uh-oh', and this uh-oh was borne out. Not completely, since he didn't turn out evil, but he did sacrifice himself to save her wind up dead without ever having any particular existence of his own. Not unsymathetically, I guess. Aside from that, as NK Jemisin wrote in a NYT review, the protagonist never really fully forms; mostly things happen around her.
In this universe, the continent populated by the *slavs was reliant for its whole history on the magical powers of a group of six real divinities and used their power to brutally conquer and enslave the neighboring island populated by the *indic people, until a few hundred years ago when the first governor of the *indic island invented a weapon that could kill deities, and used it to kill theirs. Since then the continent's *slavs have existed as a colonized state, impoverished, oppressed, and ruled over by an occupying force highly reminiscent of the British Raj. The protagonist of the book is the great-granddaughter of that conqueror and an intelligence agent investigating a murder in the *slavic capital city, a site of political unrest, ethnic tension (obviously), and eventually, encounters with deities who aren't actually completely gone. So that premise is great, and the setting is very good - as Jemisin said, the choice of these sources for the cultures and settings is refreshing, and the setting is really well-drawn. On the other hand:
So even though by about halfway I had decided not to read any more of his stuff, through a combination of like... style irritation and irritation about the way the gay guy and the woman reminiscing about her past love were written... by the end I talked myself into trying another one. Maybe it shouldn't be the next book in the trilogy, though. Something a little later.
In this universe, the continent populated by the *slavs was reliant for its whole history on the magical powers of a group of six real divinities and used their power to brutally conquer and enslave the neighboring island populated by the *indic people, until a few hundred years ago when the first governor of the *indic island invented a weapon that could kill deities, and used it to kill theirs. Since then the continent's *slavs have existed as a colonized state, impoverished, oppressed, and ruled over by an occupying force highly reminiscent of the British Raj. The protagonist of the book is the great-granddaughter of that conqueror and an intelligence agent investigating a murder in the *slavic capital city, a site of political unrest, ethnic tension (obviously), and eventually, encounters with deities who aren't actually completely gone. So that premise is great, and the setting is very good - as Jemisin said, the choice of these sources for the cultures and settings is refreshing, and the setting is really well-drawn. On the other hand:
- Dead gay.
- The aforementioned mostly-formed protagonist.
- I personally am always a little annoyed by this style of invented language: picking extant and recognizable names for people and things in the real world and swapping some phonemes around so they remain recognizable. It feels like a store full of name brand impostor food, you know? And also a bit lazy. This is probably a matter of taste and it's open to debate whether this is better or worse than constructing a whole language of one's own or using a real one.
- The investigation plot itself is not terribly effective as... an investigation. To an extent the secondary characters make up for this - like the *Norse giant with superhuman fighting skills (he's obviously a berserker) sidekick and the cynical female general governor of the city.
- The writing style was really annoying me by about 60% - not the core author's voice, I guess, more the way in which it felt a little... self-indulgent and, well, young. A tendency to melodrama and the purple and some other tendencies that aren't quite reined in, and a lot of scenes of dialogue suffering from these tendencies. This was his first published book, and I kept telling myself I used to do things like this and he will probably grow out of it.
So even though by about halfway I had decided not to read any more of his stuff, through a combination of like... style irritation and irritation about the way the gay guy and the woman reminiscing about her past love were written... by the end I talked myself into trying another one. Maybe it shouldn't be the next book in the trilogy, though. Something a little later.
