★★★★☆ Sigrud suffers

City of Miracles

Robert Jackson Bennett

City of Miracles is the third book of Robert Jackson Bennett's Divine Cities Trilogy. Book 1, City of Stairs, was mostly about Shara Komayd, book 2, City of Blades, about Turyin Mulaghesh. If you read those two books, you know that book three had to be about Sigrud Je Harkvaldsson. We first met Sigrud in City of Stairs as Shara's hulking Dreyling bodyguard. Sigrud is the world's best bodyguard -- adept with all weapons, capable of killing even a demigod monster. In City of Blades we met him again, and his daughter Signe. When Signe was killed Sigrud went berserk, killing multiple innocent Saypuri (Shara and Mulaghesh's nationality) soldiers with his bare hands. As a result he is in hiding when City of Miracles begins.

City of Miracles doesn't begin with Sigrud, however. It begins with the assassination of Shara. Sigrud, as soon as he hears the news, is set on revenging her. This sets him up in a fight with a "an angry young god", as the publisher's summary has it. You will probably not be surprised to learn that in this Sigrud is fighting on the side of the angels, in the sense that Very, Very Bad Things will happen if the angry young god wins.

City of Miracles is the sixth book by Bennett I have read. I began with his Founder's Trilogy, (which was spectacularly good, and deserves its Best Series Hugo nomination), then moved on to the Divine Cities Trilogy. All six are good, but sadly, I would have to judge City of Miracles as the least impressive of the set.

Sigrud is simply not as compelling a central character as Shara or Mulaghesh. What one finds is that, underneath Sigrud's Relentless Revenge Machine façade is a Relentless Revenge Machine. Sigrud doesn't get over things. His superpower is suffering.

Bennett's novels (the six I have read) aim for grandeur. It is a dangerous risk for an author to take, but he often gets there, and when he does, it pays off big. This time he missed the target, in my opinion. Still, even a slightly disappointing Bennett novel is very good.

Amazon review

Goodreads review

Comments

★★★★☆ Cliché, manipulative, but still surprisingly entertaining

Silent Scream Angela Marson I have noticed that many Goodreads reviewers are subtractors. What I mean by that is that they appear to evaluate books (or at least review them) by listing all the faults they can find, and then giving a low rating to those works that have lots of faults. In the alternative, adder, strategy, one looks for the good things in a book and gives a high score to a book that has lots of good stuff. I myself am mostly an adder (although I make no claim to absolute strategic purity). I mention this because Angela Marsons 's Silent Scream has serious faults. I'm going to mention a couple of them, but I nevertheless give it a four-star rating. First, you should know (this is not a fault, but just something you should know going in), that Silent Scream is emotionally heavy. It concerns institutionalized children (mostly girls) who are abused in almost every awful way you can imagine. What's more, protagonist Kim Stone is herself a survivor ...

This blog has moved to substack.

This blog has moved to b3en.substack.com .

★★★★☆ GGK in transition

Tigana Guy Gavriel Kay Guy Gavriel Kay writes historical fantasy. He doesn't like to be categorized, but he has borrowed the phrase "a quarter turn to the fantastic" to describe his work, so I think we're allowed to use it. I am a fan. I first discovered his Under Heaven series, which is about China, called Kitai in the novels. Under Heaven is brilliant. His first novel was, I believe, The Summer Tree , which is the first book of the Fionavar Tapestry trilogy. It is not historical fantasy; rather, it is straight high fantasy, and I did not like it . His next book after the Fionavar Tapestry was this one, Tigana , and here we begin to see the turn away from the fantastic. I might call this one a half-turn to the fantastic. Although he has not, In Tigana , yet reached that level of historical verisimilitude that his latest works display, and although magic is an explicit and key part of the story, it...

★★★★★ A scoundrel, a liar, a cheat, a thief, a coward—and, oh yes, a toady

Flashman: A novel George MacDonald Fraser No less an author than P.G. Wodehouse blurbed George MacDonald Fraser 's Flashman . This quote can be found on the cover of one edition, "If ever there was a time when I felt that watcher-of-the-skies-when-a-new-planet-stuff, it was when I read the first Flashman." While acknowledging Wodehouse 's sneaky hedging ("If ever"), we can also acknowledge that this is a strong endorsement. And it is deserved. Harry Flashman, the protagonist (I will not say "hero") of the Flashman Papers , is, to my experience, unique in all of fiction. He describes himself as "a scoundrel, a liar, a cheat, a thief, a coward—and, oh yes, a toady" -- and that description is accurate. He is an utterly despicable guy. Now, you're probably thinking, "This is not unusual -- I can think of dozens of literary antiheroes who match this description." And of course you're right. But what all these antiheroes...

★★☆☆☆ Danny Rand is too stupid to live

Iron Fist Scott Buck, Netflix, Marvel Iron Fist is the last and unquestionably least of the four Marvel Netflix TV series featuring various sub-Avenger-level New York heroes: Daredevil , Luke Cage , Jessica Jones , and Iron Fist . It consists of 23 episodes, a first season of 13, like all the other Marvel Netflix series, and a mercifully truncated second series of 10 episodes. Danny Rand/Iron Fist has an origin story so stupid that my IQ drops 20 points when I think about it, so I'm not going to explain him. Danny is always going on about his chi (気) and making mystical hand gestures. He has all the authenticity of a seven-dollar bill. But that's not Danny's biggest problem. Danny's biggest problem is that he is stupid. Now, Matt and Jessica and Luke occasionally do stupid things because of lack of information, or because they're carried away by emotion. Danny needs no excuse. Danny does stupid things because he is a stupid person. He has the strategic intelligen...

★★★★☆ The series starts well, but eventually becomes a drag

One for the Money Janet Evanovich I began reading Janet Evanovich 's Stephanie Plum books in 2000. I remember exactly how I happened on them. One day while boarding a plane the person behind me in the aisle said to someone in the seat she was passing, "Oh, I love those! I've only read the first two, though!" The person she was addressing responded enthusiastically. I craned my neck around to spy what she was reading, and saw one of the the Stephanie Plum books in her lap. I fixed the name Janet Evanovich in my memory (which was better 26 years ago than it is now) and later got hold of the first book. I did not regret my small act of espionage. Stephanie quickly captured my affections. I remember the exact moment I fell in love with her I shoved my key into the ignition and tried hard not to panic over the fact that I had tear gas under 125 pounds of pressure per square inch, which in my mind spelled nerve bomb, dangling between my knees. The eng...

★★★★☆ Rincewind leads a revolution

Interesting Times Terry Pratchett We met Twoflower in the very first of Terry Pratchett 's Disworld novels, The Color of Magic . He arrived in Ankh-Morpork as a tourist, introducing himself as being from the Agatean Empire, on the Counterweight Continent, the other side of the Discworld from Ank-Morpork. Twoflower returned home eventually (at the end of book 2, The Light Fantastic ), after giving his magical luggage to Rincewind. Since then we have heard essentially nothing of the Agatean Empire, until Interesting Times . In response to a request for the Great Wizzard from the Empire, Unseen University sends Rincewind there. The Agatean Empire is a sort of ill-defined amalgam of China and Japan. Like either one of those nations a century or two ago, the Empire is an autocratic state ruled in the name of an Emperor. Rincewind, the Great Wizzard (Wizzard is the label on Rincewind's hat), is drafted as the figurehead of a revolution. Rincewind is conspic...

★★★★☆ Embrace the confusion!

Witch King Martha Wells In 1995 I saw the Film Ghost in the Shell . It was a formative experience for me. The film was incredibly confusing -- cyborgs and thermoptic camouflage and international plots and sentient net intelligences and wheels within plots within wheels within plots. When it was over I had only the vaguest idea what had happened. But I was mortally certain of one thing: I LOVED it! What I didn't know at the time was that This Was How It Was Going To Be From Now On. Since then all major science fiction and most fantasy novels have been like that. I expect when I read a new one not to know what's going on. (Consider recent reads Children of Memory , Myriad , or grand-prize winner, the entirety of Tamsyn Muir 's Locked Tomb Series .) In fact, it is now at the point where, if I understand a new F&SF novel on the first read, I feel cheated. Martha Wells 's Witch King does not disappoint in this regard. Hierarchs and Expositors and...

★★★★★ King of the Cats, Alice and Thomas, Fairies, bogeymen, and assorted entertainments

Patreon Year 5 Seanan McGuire I will begin by clarifying what I am reviewing here. Seanan McGuire has a Patreon Creator page. Patreon is a website where artists can share their work with subscribers. Subscribers pay a certain amount (usually monthly, but that varies from artist to artist), and in return get access to things ("rewards" in Patreon-speak) that the artist posts on Patreon. "Things" can mean images, videos, or (most relevantly in this case) eBooks. Typically there are multiple reward tiers -- the more you pay, the more you get. McGuire set up her Patreon page in June 2016 and has posted a story every month since then, which makes 64 now (September 30, 2021, when I am writing this), plus a few one-time extras. These "stories" can be pretty substantial literary works. For instance, the reward for July 2021 was an 80,000-word novel. The way Patreon works, if you subscribe to a tier, you typically get access to everything that was posted for th...

★★★★☆ The formidable Emily Wilde

Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries Heather Fawcett Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries comprises the October, 1909-February, 1910 research journal of the protagonist Emily Wilde, an adjunct professor at Cambridge University. Emily is a scientist who studies faeries. Because it is her journal, she is the first person narrator of the book, with the exception of one chapter written by her colleague Wendell Bambleby. Emily is a splendid heroine. She is a hard-working and devoted scientist, with little interest in anything other than science. She doesn't really want to do anything except her work -- she dislikes people and conversation, and happily retreats to her office or the library whenever she can. (Some readers will find her extreme introversion implausible, but as a scientist myself, I assure you that it is realistic. Not all scientists are like Emily, but many of them are.) Emily seems like a mousy scholar, unfit for the rigors of the real world. Indeed, one char...

Search This Blog