★★★★☆ What a soldier does

City of Blades

Robert Jackson Bennett

City of Blades is the second book in Robert Jackson Bennett's Divine Cities Trilogy. The novels take place on a world whose chief political and military power is the nation of Saypur. A hundred years ago Saypur was conquered and enslaved by the Continent, which is a nation of many religions. Formerly the gods of these religions made the Continent formidable. But then Saypur turned the tables on the Continent, killing its gods and thereby destroying its military power. Saypur now occupies and rules the Continent, not gently.

The three Divine Cities novels are centered respectively on three characters: Shara Komayd, Turyin Mulaghesh, and Sigrud Dauvkind. City of Stairs tells how Shara, a Saypuri spy, defeats the last of the gods in Bulikov, the old capital of the Continent. City of Blades begins with Shara, now the embattled prime minister of Saypur, contacting the retired military governor of Bulikov, General Turyin Mulaghesh, to secretly pull her back into service to investigate something in Voortyashtan, the city of Voortya, who was Goddess of War. (Shara's former bodyguard Sigrud will be at the center of City of Miracles.)

Now, obviously, I can't tell you the plot. But I will say that it concerns two issues: contracts, and military service. Under what circumstances may a contract persist beyond death? And what is it that soldiers do? Mulaghesh answers this second question

“The word everyone forgets,” says Mulaghesh, “is ‘serve.’ ”

“Serve?”

“Yes. Serve. This is the service, and we soldiers are servants. Sure, when people think of a soldier, they think of soldiers taking. They think of us taking territory, taking the enemy, taking a city or a country, taking treasure, or blood. This grand, abstract idea of ‘taking,’ as if we were pirates, swaggering and brandishing our weapons, bullying and intimidating people. But a soldier, a true soldier, I think, does not take. A soldier gives.”

I enjoyed City of Blades even more than City of Stairs, I think, because Mulaghesh is such a vivid character. Any attempt I make to describe her will fail, I'm afraid, because she will sound like the cliché, the Old Soldier you have met in so many other books, yet somehow she is not that. For instance, although I usually abhor books that glorify weapons, there is one scene in which Mulaghesh in a fight fires a stonking huge gun, "She’s screaming, shrieking, howling as this terrific, beautiful, monstrous engine of destruction sings, its own low, guttural buzz". Somehow it *IS* Mulaghesh, and it is just PERFECT.

This is not all there is to Mulaghesh. She has a past, and she has a brain, and a conscience. City of Blades deals with some heavy issues, like war and war crimes, religion and obligation. But because of Mulaghesh, it is always readable.

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