City Of Stairs - Robert Jackson Bennett

City of Stairs came out last year, to broad acclaim. The sequel, City of Blades, is out soon, so I thought I’d better catch up before release.

The titular City of Stairs is in fact the shattered and reconstructed remnants of a far larger city, a conurbation  formed by divine agency, a meeting place for followers of various divine faiths on a continent. Then those gods were killed. The city lost touch with parts of itself formed by divine will, and contracted, leaving sections which had never met before merged together, and larger sections missing. It’s a city of survivors, familiar with the backlash of the demise of the divine. Those who killed the gods, and caused this catastrophe, now rule the city. Former colonists and slaves, without a divinity of their own, they threw off oppression to become unlikely conquerors – and now rule the continent in all but name, through economic sanction, through diplomatic pressure, and through a small but effective arm of covert operatives.

The author’s  refusal to bend the complexity of the setting is part of what makes City of Stairs wonderful. The straits of the Continentals we see in the city are still fairly dire, even a great deal of time after their stealthy occupation. It’s a wonderful portrait of a city in transition, from conquered province to junior partner – but our sympathy for those oppressed is matched by the knowledge of how they got that way. Their opposite numbers, descendants of island slaves, have a certain sympathy for that – but their efforts to retain their control of their old masters results in actions which it’s harder to go along with. It’s a world which is swathed in conflicts and contradictions. Between religious and secular. Nationalism and integration. Past and future. And the balance of those elements is something that Bennett does perfectly. The narrative serves in part, as a fulcrum that may move the world, a little, even as it shows it to us. There’s a nuanced view here, behind every interaction and every emotional and physical impact – the world is a complex, breathing, and above all, ambiguous place.

This ambiguity is emphasised by the characters with it. Our main view is provided by an "operative" from outside the continent, sent to investigate a murder. She begins the narrative filled with a certain amount of doubt, a kind of raw emotional wounding, and a weary, cynical calculation which wouldn’t be out of place in a novel of the cold war. Bennett has crafted an agent, a spy, and done so with a deftness which is, honestly, breathtaking. There’s some excellent shifts in character here too – slowly, our protagonists’s past is revealed, andit carries an honest equilibrium of hurt and joy.  Watching this torn, threatened person struggle with their convictions, especially as they negin to break down in the face of a new reality, is fascinating, agonising, and carries a fair amount of human truth.

There’s some excellent supporting cast as well – the similarly torn ex-lover of our protagonist, whose love of country and desire to improve it runs afoul of the social laws that define part of his identity. There’s the bodyguard, the killer without conscience, per se, but with a raw depth of feeling visible through the page. And an assortment of others, whose appearances, if brief, feel plausible because the author makes them so. I’m not sure I’d want to meet several of these people in a dark alley – there’s far too much time spent on the calculus of violence for that – but they do have a feeling of being people.

The plot starts slowly, as our characters investigate a murder. It quickly gathers pace, however, as it becomes clear that murder was the last of the available concerns. By halfway through the book, it really did feel difficult to put down, the weight of expectation and intrigue keeping me turning pages.

The narrative crescendo near the close was emotionally exhausting, but utterly, terrifyingly delightful – and the dénouement, touching and heart-wringing. It kept me guessing all of the way through, either because the characters knew more than the reader, but weren’t talking, or the characters knew less than, or as much as the reader, and were identically baffled. The narrative isn’t afraid to go big, either – it knocks around an entire city, on the one hand, but also uses that period to talk about attitudes to colonialism, religion, and social issues. There’s a lot of great stuff in here, and it’s approached with a care and focus which makes it an interesting, fulfilling read, as well as an enthralling one. If that sounds like something you might enjoy – this one’s absolutely worth picking up. 

Interstitial - City Of Stairs

Tomorrow we'll have a review of Robert Jackson Bennett's City Of Stairs, which was a sleeper hit last year. It's full of politics, spycraft, moral qualms, and a kind of multi-layered ambiguity which suggests it's going to be great.

Dauntless - Jack Campbell

Dauntless is the first in Jack Campbell’s Lost Fleet series. It’s billed as military SF, filled with epic space combat, lots of life-and death situations, honour, heroism, and so on. Given that basis, I’d say that it lives up to the billing.

The world of Dauntless is one of marvellous contrasts. There’s star-spanning governments, with opposing political philosophies; the corporate Syndics, and the more democratic Alliance. There’s not one, but two means of interstellar travel. And the ships that we see using those means are clearly the product of an advanced industrial base.  But this is a humanity which, we quickly become aware, has been at war for a century. Whilst the social structures put in place in peacetime are still holding – at least those we learn about – they’re under constant pressure from the people within them, struggling to match ideals with the exigencies of war. What the author does well is present to us a universe whose military is broken. They’re the product of a century of constant warfare, and it shows. 

There’s discussion of the necessity of eliminating prisoners, for example, and the desirability of bombing populated enemy planets into powder. Fleet decisions are made by committee, and the committee harbours a poisonous resentment of their enemy, and a sort of blind pride, a will to take apart the enemy at any cost.

Into this world walks Black Jack Geary, our protagonist. He’s rescued from suspended animation at the start if the novel, coming back to life a hundred years in his future – and as an officer at the start of the war, he doesn’t like what it’s become, at all. Geary is a perhaps slightly idealised version of an officer – he’s honourable, steadfast, rewards loyalty, requires discipline, and gives occasional second chances. His opponents in the fleet that he ends up commanding believe him to be dangerous, weak, or sometimes both. It’s not entirely Geary’s fault – he’s been built up as a legend during his time in hibernation, and people don’t always find what they expected and what they see in front of them matching up. This struggle with hero worship is one of the book’s better character moments. Geary is caught between needing to use individual’s view of him to get things done, and the knowledge that if he makes mistakes, that will erode the image he needs to project – he doesn’t want to be the hero of legend, but finds he has to both fill the role and find ways to adapt it, to make it work for him, rather than acting as a constraint.

There’s also some excellent exchanges between Geary and the surviving civilian representative, in a similar vein. She’s wary of accepting Geary, firstly because she suspects he’ll eventually do something in search of glory (despite his protestations to the contrary), but also because she fears what will happen if he succeeds – a hero of legend returning home with a fleet thought to have been annihilated, might be enough to overthrow a stricken government and replace them with an autocracy. It’s a clever push back by the author against the hero myth, and the sparring exchanges here were well reasoned, well written, and a thoroughly enjoyable read.

Some of the other characters don’t fare as well; they don’t really have the room they require to grow. Geary’s detractors in the fleet, for example, start off believably enough, but seem to descend into plotting against him largely out of spite. There’s a few lines around the failure to shift away from a culture that rewards aggression and has allowed lapses of discipline, but it’s not enough. I’d like to see Geary’s more fervent antagonists given a bit more room for growth – explaining and perhaps modifying their views. Instead, the antagonistic ones are also the incompetent ones – it makes for a decent read, still, as Geary struggles against these millstones around his neck, but I’d like to see a few more complex characterisations here, in line with those from the other side.

Then there’s the plot. Not to get into it in details (though it’s actually rather straightforward), but it’s reasonably paced stuff. There’s a fairly clear distinction between the combat sequences and the character pieces (as referenced above). The latter, since we’ve not mentioned them before, are very well done. The logic associated with combat at approximations of lightspeed is impeccable, and the tactics employed are both logical and dramatic. Though they sometimes felt a bit sterile, the author can certainly write a compelling combat moment, to put it mildly.

Is it worth reading? If you have a hankering for military SF, quite probably. The characters are decent enough, with the promise of more, the plot has enough impetus to keep you turning pages and the combat sequences are excellent. Certainly worth giving it a try if you’re in the mood.

Interstitial - Dauntless

Monday will see a review of Jack Campbell's Dauntless. It's the first in his rather large military-sci-fi series, The Lost Fleet. It's got a lot of excellent battle scenes, some plausible characters, and a world I want to see more of - we'll see how that goes on Monday!

The Providence Of Fire - Brain Staveley

Providence of Fire is the second in Brian Staveley’s “Chronicles of the Unhewn Throne” series. It follows directly from the first, which means it has a fair amount to live up to.

The world of Providence of Fire is hopefully familiar from the first novel. A sprawling Empire, tied together by a shared culture across uncommon geography, with an Imperial family that purports to carry a spark of the divine. That they also tend to have glowing eyes to back this claim up is rather helpful. In any event, at the close of the first book, the Emperor had been murdered, and his three children were all trying to deal with this in their own way. We do get to see a bit more of the Empire this time – actually, we get to see a fair bit more of the capital city and the surrounding countryside.

Staveley manages to make the Imperial city feel like a baroque dream, filled with towering spires and open boulevards – and then confounds expectations by taking us into the poorer quarters, the sewer runs, the slums and garrets of the lower classes. The urban underclass here feel appropriately misused, seething with vitality and distrust of authority.  They’re contrasted with a military which is shown as disciplined and effective, but ultimately supine in the hands of the authority that they serve. 

There’s a theme of strong personalities here – not just the three Imperial children, whose efforts to gain control of their lives and those around them are ministered by divine right, but generals, spiritual figures, tribal leaders. These personalities shape the world around them, and Staveley shows the driving power of those personalities, and their effect on their followers, very effectively.

Speaking of powerful personalities – we also get a view of some of the enemies of the Empire. In particular, we see an array of horsemen, plains tribes, brought together by one strong leader. The horsemen of the steppes are a staple of fantasy – Staveley’s happen to worship a divinity who requires suffering. They see pain as sacrament, for both themselves and their enemies. We don’t get to see enough of their social structures here – they serve as a brooding external threat for most of the characters. Where they do interact with one of our viewpoint characters, those interactions are either verbally scathing or brutally violent. That said, those interactions are executed perfectly – the focus of the tribes, their need for ‘hardening’, the rather unpleasant games that they play – all are entirely believable in the moment. It’s a shame though, that we don’t have time to delve deeper into the tribes, as something apart from antagonists.

Character-wise, our key views are once again the three children of the Emperor.  We do spend more time with the daughter in this novel, which is excellent. She served as an excellent view on the politics of the Empire in the first book, but wasn’t really given enough to do In this volume, there’s a rather larger share of politics – and she takes up a rather larger share of the text. There’s some interesting shifts in character as she gradually convinces those around her that she may be divinely inspired – and we get to see the mental contortions she goes through in trying to convince herself to take the Imperial throne, unaware of whether either of her brothers are still alive.

One of her brothers is, to be fair, very much alive, and leading a wing of Kettral – a sort of special forces team, which uses a giant bird as both transport and tactical assault platform (the Kettral were always a fun read in the first volume, and they maintain that streak here). The change to our protagonist as he becomes used to the burdens – and costs – of command is striking. The decisions he’s forced to make – whether to murder hostile civilians to cover the team’s tracks, whether to assist members of the team or focus on a high value target – leave both him and us morally wrung out. It’s a fascinating rendition of the effects of high stress on an individual, somewhat reminiscent of Heart of Darkness,  and Staveley keeps us mired in the mental morass alongside our viewpoint – evoking sympathy, anger and horror in equal measure.

That leaves the heir to the throne, who has the capacity to pass between various magical gates, after years of training in how to enter the requisite mental state. From a character standpoint, he’s forged further here as well. There’s issues around the cost of his actions, and whether it’s right to sacrifice another person for your goals. Whether the world is ready for what you’re trying to do, and whether, as always, the ends justify the means. It’s all wrapped up in the plot here, rather than what felt like the more intimate character study of the Kettral, but the character work slides in neatly alongside the narrative, making a cohesive, wonderfully readable whole.

I won’t get into the plot, except to say that there’s…rather a lot of it. There’s a great many pivot points in this book, where things can fall out one way or another and have grand impact on what the first volume described as the status quo. The pacing’s solid, the lead up and smaller crises were more than enough to keep me reading – and then occasionally, there’d be an absolute game changer, with ripples felt throughout the rest of the text. Staveley isn’t playing around – this is high stakes politics, epic battles, and real, lasting consequences felt in the narrative as a result.

Is it worth reading? Assuming you’ve read the first volume, absolutely. It’s dialled  everything up to eleven, and you’ll be feeling the effects of Providence of Fire long after you’re done reading it. 

Interstitial - The Providence of Fire

A few months ago, I reviewed Brian Staveley's The Emperor's Blades , in preparation for the sequel arriving. At long last, I got around to reading the sequel - so tomorrow will see a review of his The Providence of Fire.

Two of Swords (Part Eight) - K.J. Parker

Two of Swords is the new serialised novel by K.J. Parker. The first eight parts are available now, and run to about eighty pages each. Further parts will be made available on a monthly basis. I’m going to try and put out a review for one of the currently available, and then review each new part in the month where it becomes available.

Part eight of the series continues the tradition of the first seven, in giving us the viewpoint of a secondary character from the preceding part. In this case, it’s that of the Imperial food taster, seconded into minding a thief (Musen, from the first and second parts of the serial) as they travel out from the capital to acquire a particularly special deck of cards.

In terms of setting, we get quite a lot of the familiar here. We’re dragged across desolate moors, and other pieces of unpleasant countryside. In some ways, these are familiar – they look a lot like the desolate moors that the village infantrymen were dragged across in the opening part of the serial. That parallel, a journey out, and a journey back, is echoed elsewhere as well. Part of that echo comes when our taster and his thief meet other characters. Most of them are, it turns out, fairly heavily armed, and of ambiguous friendliness. There’s also a lot more Craftsmen kicking about. The Craftsmen, thus far, have been something of a shadow, a power behind the curtains of the power behind the throne. A large proportion of our characters seem to have been part of the mysterious ‘Lodge’, at least nominally – and here we finally see them in a bit more depth.

That’s the world that Parker’s got for us here – it’s familiar, from earlier in the serial, but the addition of the Craftsmen leaves our understanding of that world changed. At least, somewhat. In vintage Parker style, the dialogue of our new protagonist with the members of the Craft that he meets are rather cryptic. In fact, they’re deliberately obfuscatory. Our protagonist is trying to prise information from the Craft without giving away his bargaining position, as he tries to learn what’s going on whilst acquiring the aforesaid deck of cards. They rather want the money that he has in hand, for various long term reasons, but don’t want to give too much away. It’s reminiscent of a Le Carre thriller – both sides speaking around the point, assuming knowledge, even assuming certain assumptions. The effect is to offer the reader a half-visible glimmer of understanding, surrounded by a swamp of potential  fabrications. On the other hand, Parker’s dialogue has always been a joy to rad. It flows wonderfully, with a perfect pitch of wry self-knowledge on both sides of the conversation. The undercurrent of dry, pragmatic wit is still there, and gave me some solid chuckles, as well as the occasional raised eyebrow as something particularly clever went off.

On which topic – the plot. Well, the conversation itself doesn’t advance the broader plot so much. However, it does throw some elements into the mix of the plot. The consequences of the conversation, however, are broadly described at the close of the text, and there’s hints that what happened here is one of the pivot points for the wider conflict.  It’s not a fast paced occasion, by any means, but as usual, it’s a piece of compelling prose, which makes promises, and then delivers on them – if not always in the way you might expect.  As with the preceding segment, it’s a fairly short 60 pages, and they felt like they went by a lot quicker. This volume doesn’t have the raw physicality of some of the others, but has a compulsive momentum that won’t let go of the reader – and makes for a fascinating read.