This started with such a punch that I felt like I was free-falling into the rest of the story. I've not read any other books by Mark Lawrence so the magic system and universe he writes about here was completely new to me but I don't think that detracted from the story.

I loved that there was such a wide range of aspects to this story. You had strong themes of community, alongside the desolate feeling of 'the end of the world', along side magical powers and ancient cities, alongside mechanical/animatronic killing creatures. Made for a good kind of chaos.

Struggled to get through it purely because it's so not a genre I'm in the habit of reading.