Editorial Reviews
Publishers Weekly
★ 11/16/2015
Bennett’s astonishingly good sequel to 2014’s City of Stairs makes a riveting and often heartbreaking case against war. The Continent, a land that’s somewhat like Russia, once colonized Saypur, a land that’s somewhat like India; then the Saypuri discovered how to kill the Continental gods, and they conquered their former oppressors. Tensions between the two lands remain high. Saypuri prime minister Shara Komayd coerces retired general Turyin Mulaghesh into visiting the Continental city of Voortyashtan, where the goddess of war and death once ruled, and where a spy recently vanished. On her mission, Turyin meets Signe, the daughter of Shara’s former assassin, Sigrud. She’s the CTO of a company intent on revitalizing the local harbor. Turyin is also reunited with her wartime comrade Biswal, with whom she committed atrocities that still affect them decades later. Bennett continues his theme of the influence of imperialism on what appears to be a very similar world to ours (albeit one in which gods helped shape the geopolitics), seamlessly melding spycraft and mythology. Turyin, a physically and emotionally wounded warrior who both loathes battle and excels at it, serves as a fascinating character to shoulder the book’s heavy burden of tragedy. This is a deep, powerful novel that’s worth reading and rereading with many pauses for thought. Agent: Cameron McClure, Donald Maass Literary Agency. (Feb.)
From the Publisher
“Astonishingly good… a deep, powerful novel that’s worth reading and rereading.”—Publishers Weekly (starred)
“Building beautifully upon the richly detailed world introduced in the first book of the series, Bennett serves a stew of fantasy and adventure with a healthy dose of humor and a ladle full of violence.”--Library Journal (starred) “Richly detailed and expertly plotted. A grand entertainment.”—Kirkus
“Like the very best speculative fiction, City of Blades immerses readers in a made-up world, only to force us to take a harder look at the real one.”--Booklist
Praise for City of Stairs:
"Readers seeking a truly refreshing fantasy milieu should travel to Bulikov, and welcome its conquest.”--New York Times Book Review
"A delightful urban fantasy that travels through a city full of Escher-like staircases and alternate realities." --Washington Post
"[An] incredible journey through a wondrously weird and surprising world... Awesome." --Tor.com
“Bennett has built a great world, original and unique, with a scent and a texture, a sense of deep, bloody history, and a naturally blended magic living in the stones." --NPR.org
Finalist for the 2015 World Fantasy, Locus, and British Fantasy Awards
Library Journal
★ 12/01/2015
Turyin Mulaghesh had hoped for the quiet retirement Shara Komayd promised her after the events of City of Stairs, but it seems there's one last task to accomplish. She must travel to Voortyashtan to investigate the disappearance of a ministry operative. Upon arrival, Turyin sees that the Saypuri government has hired a Dreyling company run by Signe, the daughter of Shara's old partner in mayhem Sigrud (who also makes an appearance), to dredge the harbor of Voortyashtan and make it a viable port once again. Turyin fails to find the missing woman, but she does uncover evidence that the goddess of death and war who once protected Voortyashtan may be dead but not completely gone. VERDICT Building beautifully upon the richly detailed world introduced in the first book of the series, Bennett (The Troupe; American Elsewhere) serves a stew of fantasy and adventure with a healthy dose of humor and a ladle full of violence. Switching protagonists from sneaky Shara to the blunt soldier Turyin gives the sequel a fresh feel, and readers will be eager to read more books set in this fascinating universe.—MM
Kirkus Reviews
2015-10-28
"Don't forget, it was their choice to get involved in this war": Fantasian Bennett builds another world, convincingly, in which empires rise and fall and blood flows. Less literarily allusive than its predecessor, City of Stairs (2014), this contribution to that worldbuilding epic is also more somber in tone, not that there isn't some good humor along the way. Turyin Mulaghesh, sometime general in the Saypuri army, is righteously ticked off to discover that someone in the bureaucracy is messing with her pension, luring her in for an unpromising mission: she'll need to go to the ghost city of Voortyashtan, where a massive harbor project is underway to consolidate imperial power, and hang tight until the paperwork can get straightened out. But there's more to it than that, for which reason Mulaghesh grumbles, "Why in hells would I want to do this?" Yes, hells, for when she's not spitting out stronger curses, Mulaghesh talks like a teenager down at the mall or a Viking with a hangover ("If you're not the kin of Sigrud je Harkvaldsson, then I am a dead fucking dog"). Bad things are happening in Voortyashtan, one-time home of the gods who fell in defeat to the empire; in its raw tribal violence and the unending atrocities clashing armies commit it might be another Afghanistan, though there are ghosts and gods in twilight to contend with, to say nothing of strange doings down beneath the surface of the planet. Shades of Outland, Dr. Lazarus! Yet the crimes are less cut and dried than all that, especially when a giant metal woman comes into the picture, "her hands…nothing but knives, long and curved and thin…." Bennett clearly has fun doing all the scene-setting and complicating that his tale involves, and while in the end this is a warning against the totalitarian impulse, it makes all kinds of detours into the dark hearts of men—and women, too. Sometimes too talky but richly detailed and expertly plotted. A grand entertainment.
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