Book Review: City of Stairs | Robert Jackson Bennett (Divine Cities #1)

in #books6 years ago

Not one but many gods are dead in Robert Jackson Bennett's City of Stairs...

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Image Attribution: Amazon

Written by Robert Jackson Bennett and published by the fellows at Broadway Books. It is the first book of his Divine Cities trilogy, followed by City of Blades and City of Miracles.

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This novel manages the wonderful feat of being both a mystery and a fantasy. And it does both very, very well. We open with a scene that serves to introduce and exposit a great deal about the world. It is, perhaps, a touch awkward: the trial's contents never reappear, though a couple of its characters do, and its ending serves to introduce us also to our main storyline. It is a necessary introduction, and however expository it may be, it sets up an interesting world.

The central city of the book is Bulikov, once the Seat of the World on the Continent, where the six Divinities gathered once to create a great city. Seventy (or so) years ago, the Kaj of Saypur figured out a weapon to kill them. And so he did. As the novel goes on, however, we learn that the history of the Continent and of Saypur and of the Divinities and Bulikov are just a touch more complex than that...

It is a marvelously interesting and original universe. That man in the robes? One of the Kolkashtani's worshippers. You will learn more of Kolkash if you read.


We have a fantastic main character in Shara Thivani (really Komayd), a spy working for the Ministry's (which runs Saypur) intelligence service. She hasn't been home in sixteen years thanks to a scandal with the National Party bringing down a man who would've been prime minister. She is assisted by her "secretary" Sigrun. Also worthy of note is Mulaghesh, the governor overseeing Bulikov, and Vohannes Votrov, for a time Shara's lover, and one of the richest men in Bulikov.

Shara is a marvelously knowledgeable character: she knows more about the Continent than most Continentals (you'll learn why if you read) and besides that she is someone who knows what she's doing.

Sigrun at first appears to us as the stereotypical silent bodyguard, an impression which will last right up to the moment he speaks, revealing himself to be an intelligent, even articulate man, and one with deep, if long buried and scarred over, pains.

In Mulaghesh we have a retired soldier, quite willing and ready to retire, and in Vohannes we have a character of tension: whose side is he really on? As the intricacies grow, so to does the mystery expand, growing rapidly from the murder of a 'cultural ambassador' to a plot to bring back on of the Divinities.


I enjoyed reading this book immensely: it's crackling and snappy. But at the same time, reflecting back on it, I'd say there's a lot of critique I could give it, too.

The characters are not sketched out very fully, and as interesting as they are, they're just not drawn out in much complexity. The plotline, though magnificently fun with impressive stakes, seems to resolve too easily. The fantastic nature of the Divinities allows for many an easy resolution - even if, admittedly, those resolutions do take a little time to come. Everything seems to wrap up in a tight little bow.

However - the dialogue is snappy, the banter marvelous. There is humor in snatches and it always brought forth a chuckle. Prose-wise, Bennett paints the city of Bulikov, with its walls that grow into the sky, in beautiful terms, such that I could see the city sprawling forth in my mind's eye.

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A story of gods and geopolitics like this could've easily been over-stuffed, over-descriptive, over-detailed. It manages to touch, if only very briefly, patriotism, discrimination, corruption, history, slavery, oppression, and belief. And more. It builds a truthfully rather complicated world without ever bogging down the description and then building a reasonably unique plotline off of that.

Even if the characters are sketched out as thoroughly as I felt they ought to be - and upon rereading I may well change my mind about this (an interrogation of an elderly maid showed a great deal of nuance for such a minor character) - they are all, at least, reasonably interesting. Shara especially is a fantastic protagonist, while Sigrun quickly becomes more than he appears to be. Even if the challenges resolve a little too easily by way of deus ex machina, I never felt "cheated" by it.

Throughout it all, I was captivated, intrigued, and eager to turn the next page. The world was interesting, the story often left me wondering what, precisely, was going on, and Bennett's marvelous prose, at once simple and also just a touch painterly, creates a unique world.

I will be reading the sequel.


As for The Red Knight, I gave up on it. I just couldn't get any real feeling for the characters, or what was going on. A war with the Wild in an alternate England called Alba ought to be very interesting, and I just wasn't feeling it. It bored me. I was more interested by the first chapter of City of Stairs - not even twenty pages - than I was by three hundred of The Red Knight.

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