Friday, July 20, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: City of Miracles by Robert Jackson Bennett



City of Miracles is the third and final book in Robert Jackson Bennett's "The Divine Cities" trilogy that began with City of Stairs.  It's honestly a very different book than its two priors, although it's up there for my favorite of the trilogy.  Whereas the first two books were fantastical mysteries/thrillers, with its protagonists trying to figure out what was really happening in time to prevent the oncoming crisis, while remaining largely in the same location, City of Miracles is more like what you would get if you combined Jason Bourne with NK Jemisin's The Kingdom of Gods.  This is an awesome thing, although not quite as awesome as that comparison makes it sound (as I consider TKoG to be one of my favorite books ever, that's not meant to be a criticism).

City of Miracles follows a favorite character from the prior two books, Sigrud Je Harkvaldsson, the Dreyling (think Viking), as he attempts to get revenge for the assassination of the first book's protagonist, Shara Komayd.  Whereas the prior two books featured characters having to solve situations with their minds, Sigrud is (while highly intelligent) much more inclined to solve problems with his fists, knives, or guns.  The result is a more action packed story that ends still on a nicely poignant note to conclude this trilogy nicely.

Note:  While each book in this trilogy has been stand-alone, and it might've been possible to read City of Blades without City of Stairs, it is not advisable to begin the trilogy here, as there are a lot of references to the prior books in this series (and the prior two books are very good, so why would you).


---------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------------
When ex-Prime Minister Shara Komayd is assassinated, her former bodyguard/associate and now fugitive Sigrud Je Harkvaldsson decides to abandon his life in hiding and to get revenge for his former close companion.  But what he finds when he does is that Shara was not totally out of the political game of this world - in fact she may have been involved in a new global conflict between forces of the Divine.

For while the six Primary Divines are gone from this world (5 dead, 1 missing), some of their children seem to have escaped the purge years ago, and one of them is not content to remain in hiding, but instead seeks the utter dominance the gods once had.  What can Sigrud do against this powerful child of the Divine and can he really keep Shara's legacy safe?  The answer will change the world one last time.
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If there was one major side character who was a favorite of mine (and I suspect of many readers) in the first two books of this series, it was Sigrud Je Harkvaldsson.  Don't get me wrong, I love guile heroes (Shara is an absolute gem), but Sigruds design as someone who just manages to barrel through physically every obstacle with seemingly little effort has always made him amazing, and that combined with his intelligence has made him a really fun character to follow - and a bit of a tragic one after City of Blades.  This book finally features him as a main character, and he's every bit as amazing - awesome at times, tragic and relateable at others, as you would imagine.

The result incidentally of switching from heroines who deal with problems more with their minds to a hero who deals with things with his own physical might is that the form of the book changes.  I made a Jason Bourne reference before the jump, and I really mean that comparison - there's even a scene on what's basically an air-tram involving our hero jumping on top and on the side of the train with a knife, while his traveling companion tries to use a rifle (to shoot a moving projectile) that felt like it could come directly out of a Bourne or similar action movie.  And it is as awesome as it sounds.  There's still a bit of mystery solving done by our hero in this book as in the prior two books, but what exactly is going on is pretty apparently early on - aided by yet again the pre-chapter blurbs of a historian which let the reader know pretty clearly (and well before the characters) what actually is going on.

Our main antagonist of this book....eh, he's okay.  This is where the Kingdom of Gods reference I made above comes in - he's pretty similar to the antagonist of that book, if not quite as interesting or good (he's similarly tragic in very similar ways, but is more clearly a child so it's hard to treat him as seriously).  And the rest of the worldbuilding, now featuring more active lesser divinities, is interesting but it's been kind of done before (again, The Kingdom of Gods reference I made earlier).  But the ending and end result is immensely satisfying and is an excellent way to cap off the series.

Again, I really enjoyed this whole series, and would recommend it to people wanting some interesting fantasy thrillers - it's well worth your time.
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