A review by moirwyn
City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett
5.0
This review originally appeared on my blog, Books Without Any Pictures:
http://bookswithoutanypictures.com/2016/06/02/its-that-time-again-mini-reviews/
Every now and then my backlog of read-but-not-reviewed starts getting ridiculous. That’s currently the case, and I want to clean house before the weekend comes so I can cosplay as Hermione Granger while not feeling guilty over the shit I should have done on my blog (stressing over unfinished work would be totally in character for Hermione though). So, time for some mini-reviews!
I’ll start with City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett. This was a damn good book. So much fantasy falls into a Tolkein-like paradigm, and then every now and then you come across something fresh and exciting and different that makes you realize why you fell in love with the genre in the first place.
City of Stairs is the tale of the city of Bulikov, which has been conquered by the Saypuri and had it’s entire history, culture, and identity erased through Orwellian mindfuckery. The Saypuri were originally Bulikov’s slaves, and the people of Bulikov were able to become oppressors because they had the gods on their side. But then the Saypuri discovered the gods’ weaknesses, killed them all (presumably), and the roles were reversed. You’ll note my use of the word “presumably.” That’s important.
When a Saypuri professor studying Bulikov’s past is murdered, secret agent Shara Thivani takes it personally, and begins to probe deep into Bulikov’s secrets. She also uncovers some secrets that her own government has been keeping. It’s a cross between a spy novel and an archaeological treasure hunt, and Shara finds that not all of the gods are as dead as the Saypuri think they are. And because there are so many generations worth of baggage coming from both the Saypuri and the citizens of Bulikov, it’s a political/cultural/anthropological puzzle for Shara to solve, a challenge which she readily accepts. The complexity of those social issues and the way that Robert Jackson Bennett presents them within this fictionalized situation have real-world importance for understanding 21st century America, and that’s how I like my fantasy–dark, magical, and yet despite of (or perhaps because of) the magic completely on the nose in uncomfortable topics that we like to try to avoid.
http://bookswithoutanypictures.com/2016/06/02/its-that-time-again-mini-reviews/
Every now and then my backlog of read-but-not-reviewed starts getting ridiculous. That’s currently the case, and I want to clean house before the weekend comes so I can cosplay as Hermione Granger while not feeling guilty over the shit I should have done on my blog (stressing over unfinished work would be totally in character for Hermione though). So, time for some mini-reviews!
I’ll start with City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett. This was a damn good book. So much fantasy falls into a Tolkein-like paradigm, and then every now and then you come across something fresh and exciting and different that makes you realize why you fell in love with the genre in the first place.
City of Stairs is the tale of the city of Bulikov, which has been conquered by the Saypuri and had it’s entire history, culture, and identity erased through Orwellian mindfuckery. The Saypuri were originally Bulikov’s slaves, and the people of Bulikov were able to become oppressors because they had the gods on their side. But then the Saypuri discovered the gods’ weaknesses, killed them all (presumably), and the roles were reversed. You’ll note my use of the word “presumably.” That’s important.
When a Saypuri professor studying Bulikov’s past is murdered, secret agent Shara Thivani takes it personally, and begins to probe deep into Bulikov’s secrets. She also uncovers some secrets that her own government has been keeping. It’s a cross between a spy novel and an archaeological treasure hunt, and Shara finds that not all of the gods are as dead as the Saypuri think they are. And because there are so many generations worth of baggage coming from both the Saypuri and the citizens of Bulikov, it’s a political/cultural/anthropological puzzle for Shara to solve, a challenge which she readily accepts. The complexity of those social issues and the way that Robert Jackson Bennett presents them within this fictionalized situation have real-world importance for understanding 21st century America, and that’s how I like my fantasy–dark, magical, and yet despite of (or perhaps because of) the magic completely on the nose in uncomfortable topics that we like to try to avoid.