I received a copy of this book as part of the 2018 Hugo Awards voter's packet and therefore won't be reviewing it on NetGalley.

Loved everything about this, but particularly the examination of guilt and culpability in warfare. I'm looking forward to the next book in the series

As the second book in this trilogy, I had no problem diving into the universe. The story line was engaging, enjoyable, and kept me coming back for more. My only complaint was that I was expecting the same protagonist as the first book, yet, it worked. I felt like I made a new friend in Turyin Mulaghesh. Of course, I started reading City of Miracles minutes after I finished this book! Thank you Robert Bennett!

4.5 stars. An even better novel than it's predecessor 'City of Stairs', and that was indeed a high bar. Robert Jackson Bennett returns us to the world of Sayapur and Bulikov a few years after the events of the previous installment. This time, Shara Komayd is offstage, the spotlight reserved for the doubty General Turyin Mulaghesh.

Mulaghesh has 'retired' for reasons unclear. Shara manipulates her despatch on a mission to the contentious and dangerous city of Voortyastan, to search for an agent who has gone missing. Strange things are afoot there, and events have the stink of the divine, which should not be possible since the relevant Divinity, Voortya, the suitably monstrous avatar of warfare death and destruction has been long dead. Finding out the reasons brings tragedy, violence and a searing reflection on just what it is to be a soldier, and what it is to serve and to sacrifice.

Bennett keeps the pace with evocative writing. The horrifying image of the vicious sentinels, loyal footsoldiers of Vortya, yearning for their promised reward of violence and mayhem is one that will stick with me for a long time.

The Second in Robert Jackson Bennett's "The Divine Cities" trilogy, City of Blades follows up on its predecessor (City of Stairs) by moving to another formerly "Divine" city a few years later and shifting the main protagonist to an ancillary character from the first book: General Turyin Mulaghesh (pictured on the author's blog here). Once again, we find our protagonist investigating a mystery that suggests the seemingly dead Gods might not be so dead after all, but this time instead of a guile heroine, we follow a woman with PTSD way out of her depth as she tries to make up for her dark past.



The result is a good book, but easily the weakest of the trilogy. Mulaghesh is an excellent character, but isn't quite as good at carrying the book as Shara (who merely cameos here) did in Book 1, and several side characters are simply more interesting. The book does contain the most interesting ending of the trilogy, but overall lacks the impact of its predecessor or successor.



More after the Jump:



---------------------------------------------------Plot Summary---------------------------------------------------

A few years after becoming a hero at the Battle of Bulikov (City of Stairs), General Turyin Mulaghesh, has retired from public life to a beach island, to the befuddlement of many. But then a messenger comes from Prime Minister Shara Komayd....with a request for Turyin to perform one last mission: go to Voortyashtan, the City of the Deceased God Voortya, and under a covert story examine the strange situation there. That Situation? First, the discovery of a metal ore that seems to have inexplicable properties that allow it to be a supereffective conductor of electricity...which suggests some Divine influence...and Second, the disappearance of a Saypuri agent investigating the metal's potential divine properties



But when Mulaghesh gets to Voortyashtan, she soon finds that the individuals in the City are very familiar to her...and bring up elements of her tragic past. For the General in charge of the Military Base is her old commander General Lalith Biswal, with whom she allegedly committed war crimes when she was a teenager. And the agent who is her primary contact is the daughter of Shara's former secretary/bodyguard, who wants to progress the world through improved technology and wants nothing to do with her father's past. And worse....the situation on the ground between the locals and the Saypur military is a boiler-pot, threatening to explode at any point....and that's before the threatened intervention of the divine comes into play?



Shara got Mulaghesh to agree to the mission by asking her to "Make it Matter." But can someone with her own demons truly do anything of the sort? Or will the absolute worst reoccur and overwhelm not just her...but the entire Continent?

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Turyin Mulaghesh is a very different protagonist than the prior book's heroine, Shara Komayd. Whereas Shara was a guile hero through and through - a spy who used knowledge and trickery to get her way - Turyin is a former soldier with massive PTSD for some heinous acts she committed at the beginning of her career. She's tactically smart and as unbiased as someone from her position in life can be toward her opponents, but she's basically forced into an intelligence gathering and mystery solving role by default, and it is very much against her nature. It's an interesting twist, and it for the most part works. Turyin's tragic past also works very well - and calls to mind many real world parallel atrocities - and the reaction of her former commanding officer, Biswal to it, is just as fascinating and understandable....if maybe a bit predictable. And the book's conflict is resolved in an incredibly clever way which really surprised me.



I also liked some of the secondary characters - badass Sigurd returns and is great as usual, but his daughter Signe is a major character and is a really fun complementary character - unlike her father (who she dislikes), she's an innovator and inventor and creator of a major corporation who believes technology will be the way to guide the future, not battle. This is in essence a major theme of this book, as one of the historical characters repeatedly invoked had the same concept, which led to Saypur's prosperity with the gods destroyed...and it's a theme that works.



Still, the worldbuilding is a bit less impressive this time than in City of Stairs. Some of the wonder of the Divine is a bit lost after going through that book, even if Voortyashtan is very very different from Bulikov and the Divine involved is very different, the sense of wonder of the prior book is kind of lost. The book also continues the worldbuilding with passages from histories and other characters that spoil some events to come, which is again a bit annoying as the reader is obviously more used to expecting it.



And I have to say that I was been a bit confused by the technology level shown by the countries in this world - naturally the tech levels won't match up with ours since Divine works replaced much of modern technology for a while meaning certain tech wasn't quite developed in line with works in our world - but it's still sometimes all over the place like the world can't quite figure out which tech should exist (we're in like early 20th century with rifles, and yet later era with other technology and electricity...it's weird).



In any event, whereas City of Stairs was a masterpiece, City of Blades is merely very good. So, I don't mean to be too negative - it's still a very good book well worth your time.

I loved it! I forgot to write a review! I also won paperback copies of all three books and I feel like such a brat now.

Really, SO, SO, SOOOOOOOOO good.
I wish it had been a teensy bit quicker to pick up at the outset, as I had to really push myself to get going, but once I finally dove in it was awesome. Bennett is an absolute master of original world building.
Luckily for me, City of Miracles is just sitting there waiting, all ready to go. And it's more of Sigrud! (hurray!) but... Shara is assassinated? And what will happen to Tatyana? AAAAH!!!

City of Blades is the follow-up to a book I read last year, City of Stairs (though the cover art on that one always makes me think it's called 'City of Stars'), which I gave 4 stars to because of a couple of annoying issues I had with it - for more details, see my review, which I've linked to above. This time around, I'm pleased to say, neither of those annoyances seem to make a repeat appearance and so I'm happily giving City of Blades 5 stars.

Anyway, if you're not familiar with these particular books, they're based in a world where until relatively recently, the particular chunk of the world where City of Blades is set (the Continent) was ruled by a number of Divinities. Saypur, which now rules pretty much all of the world including the Continent, was a source of slave labour and generally looked down on for not having a Divinity of its own but subsequently rebelled and overthrew both the Continent's rule and the Divinities themselves.

One of the supporting characters from City of Stairs plays the major role in this book, as the formidable General Mulaghesh is first discovered struggling with retirement from the military and is basically blackmailed into going to the Continent - ostensibly, she's there to serve out her time and get her pension, but really she's there to investigate the disappearance of a Saypuri agent. The city where Mulaghesh ends up is going through major construction works and there's also been a recent discovery, a strange new metal ore which defies scientific explanation. Mulaghesh discovers that the woman running the construction has a lot to hide and that the agent she's trying to find seems to have been involved in something decidedly unsavoury and possibly involving the city's former Divinity.

As with the previous book, the world-building is excellent and this time we're dealing with the creation (and potential destruction) of an afterlife for warriors who have become literally human weapons in the service of their Divinity, as well as considerations of what it is to be a soldier. Mulaghesh is still dealing with the personal aftermath of the things she did many years earlier and not always doing it well, which makes her a poignant choice at times for a point of view character (especially when compared to her former commanding officer, who is also there in Voortyashan).

Anyway, in short, I liked City of Blades a lot and felt it worked much better for me than its predecessor did, so I'm looking forward to seeing what Robert Jackson Bennett has planned next. From the way this book ends, it looks like Mulaghesh is going to be a main character in future novels and I'm more than happy with that.

I read this book immediately upon its publication because I loved "City of Stairs" so much. "City of Blades" was not a direct sequel. The location and main character changed, but it took place in the same world and what a world. In this, we see Saypuri occupying force and its attempts to civilize their occupied city. The main character, General Turyin Mulaghesh, is a great character to follow. She's grumpy, she's complicated, she's smart, and she's so human. We get to see more about the Divine in this book, and it's fresh, original, and compelling.

This followup to "City of Stairs" shows Bennett's talents and shows that his world is much bigger than the examples that we've seen. Highly recommended to anyone who's looking for original fantasy.

This is the setting where we first encounter one of the most intriguing protagonists I’ve encountered in a while: Shara Thivani. Supposedly a low-level consular official, she is actually a secret intelligence operative attempting to discover the truth about the death of her former teacher and mentor.

In turns arrogant and humble, harsh and kind, foolish and exceedingly clever, Shara is a contradictorily appealing character. In conjunction with her unlikely allies – the huge, indestructible warrior Sigrud, and the astute but taciturn Governor Turyin Mulaghesh, she stubbornly unravels the mysteries and the conspiracies to uncover a world-changing revelation.

Mystery, spies, magic, and an elaborate, fascinating world: I found it an irresistible combination – one that kept me up at night when I should have been getting sleep for work the next day.

City of Blades is on my 2016 Hugo Nomination list for Best Novel, and next year this series will be on my list for Best Series.

<strong><em>This</em></strong>, my friends, is how you write an epic, original, engaging fantasy!

Author Robert Jackson Bennett is a wizard, I'm sure of it. He can take a complex, unusual idea and make it simple and ordinary for the reader and likewise take a simple, seemingly ordinary idea and provide a complex world around it, and he blends it all together for a very engaging, totally believable adventure.

General Turyin Mulaghesh is trying to enjoy retirement on a remote section of an island when a messenger manages to find her. Due to a technicality, she hasn't earned her retirement benefits and she's being pressed into service again for just a few months. But her official, casual mission of 'observation' has a secondary, non-public mission to find out what's happened to Special Investigator Choudry, who was also sent to this ass-end-of-the-country, unsecured Fort Thinadeshi ("just outside of Voortyashtan proper") with a secret mission and investigating a rare and unusual mineral called 'thinadeskite.'

But we wouldn't be following General Mulagesh's story if something big wasn't going to happen.

It is difficult to review this book without giving too much away, and more difficult to synopsize given the intricacies of the relationships of the characters and the history of the world in which this takes place. Trust Bennett, however, to give the reader everything s/he needs to make sense of this world, but also expect to be surprised just when you think you know where this story is going.

For most of the first half of the book, Bennett sets us up by establishing the characters and giving us a bit of a mystery (what is this thinadeskite and what happened to Choudry) mixed with some deadly action (attacks on the fort and brutal murders of some of the locals) with only small hints of anything supernatural or fantasy about this. But this is where Bennett the wizard shows his skills, because when the story takes a strong left turn, it feels perfectly natural and you realize later that all the hints where there for you all along.

This is one of those books that becomes a page-turner the deeper you get in to it. I have a reading routine, but I was constantly breaking my routine in order to read a little more - a little further - in this book each day, and I was exhausted by the time this was done.

This is unquestionably Turyin Mulaghesh's story, but like the truly great works of fiction, her story impacts the human race and she interacts with mankind and gods alike. And the fact that she is a General, a warrior, has great meaning to everyone around her.

I am immediately jumping in to the next book in the series, but I think that this works fine as a stand-alone novel. You'll simply <em>want</em> to read more in this story.

Looking for a good book? <em>The City of Blades</em> by Robert Jackson Bennett is a powerful, destined-to-be-a-classic epic fantasy that will have you staying up late in order to keep reading.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

This was one impressive read! I read the first book in this series, City of Stairs, a few months ago and really enjoyed it so I was really excited to finally get around to reading the second book in the series, City of Blades. A lot of times the second book in a series doesn't quite live up to the first so I was a bit worried going into the book. There was no need for any worry because as good as the first book was, this one was even better. I had such a hard time putting this book down and when I was away from it, I couldn't get it out of my mind.

I had really expected this book to focus on the same group of characters and I was somewhat wrong. The main character in this book is Mulaghesh who did play an important role in the first book but was not the lead character. I liked Mulaghesh in the first book but I absolutely loved her in this installment. Getting to learn some of her back story really opened up her character. She is tough, smart, and somewhat haunted by her past. I love the an older woman who has seen and done a lot of things is the person at the center of this story.

This book takes place in Voortyashtan which was very different than the setting of the first book. This meant that while some of the world building did build on the what was established in the previous book, a lot of this world was entirely new. The City of Blades ended up being something I would have never imagined but as it was described it I almost felt as if I were there. I really feel like there is almost no boundaries with what this series can explore.

The story in this book was very exciting. I did think that some of the earlier parts of the book were a bit tedious as I tried to figure out what was really going on. When the story took off, it really didn't let up. There are so many different things to solve that are all interconnected. The story took quite a few twists that I didn't see coming. I was a bit nervous as I read because I had no idea how things would work out for Mulaghesh and everyone.

I would highly recommend this book to others. This is the second book in the series and I do think that this series really needs to be read in order. The stories are not a continuation but the events of the first book really impacted the characters and the world they live in. I can't wait to see what is going to happen in City of Miracles!

I received a review copy of this book from Random House Publishing Group - Broadway Books via Blogging for Books and NetGalley.