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competencefantasy's Reviews (912)
Wow this has got really good chacter and better theme than I saw coming. The time travel stuff makes the plot a little disoriented but all in good fun.
Clearly the middle of a series but I still loved it. The characters are so vivid.
It felt highly symbolic and yet really comfortable to read. It also came with more feels then I expected.
I know it's traditional for the middle book in. trilogy to be slightly lesser, but this one drew me in much more. Rather than focusing on the university plot, which is where the last book led me to believe it was going, it following the natural personal and emotional consequences of the first story. I thought the representations of both a similar brain state to mine and family issues were well done. I was also annoyed by the cliffhanger. Must be doing something right
It simultaneously scratches my mystery itch and somehow my magical school itch as well.
Each new section broke my brain in the best of ways. The prose is absolutely gorgeous and devastating. Also, you can find the best footnotes ever written, fictional or otherwise, right here.
Please note a lot of the sections have horror qualities and/or need warnings so if you're harmed by this sort of thing, be sure to do your due diligence.
Please note a lot of the sections have horror qualities and/or need warnings so if you're harmed by this sort of thing, be sure to do your due diligence.
What if there were gods? A pantheon of powerful, unevenly distributed, and breathtakingly interventionist gods? Imagine divine intervention so frequent that miracles serve as a magic system and the chosen people, who have no idea why they were selected but are oh so proud anyway, rule over the not favored by means of holy expansionist might. Then suppose those gods could be killed. City of Stairs deals with a world where the gods are (probably) dead, the power their follower nation enjoyed has crumbled to the former victims, and the cultural and political biases have very much not gotten over it yet. Following an intelligence officer protagonist and brilliant yet flawed supporting cast, the novel deals with the political and personal fallout from this system of theology.
