City of Stairs

What a fantastic book. I am biased in that I really love Robert Jackson Bennett's writing, but this was definitely a good story. Very weighty. I've criticized other books for bringing up philosophical questions and not answering them but that's because those books literally bring them up, using characters as a mouthpiece to just point blank ask questions which is unsatisfying. This book makes YOU ask the questions. It has a lot to say about religion and bureaucracy, about history and truth, and about generational pain and trauma.

Amusingly, if the Shadow of the Leviathan series is about trusting the system, then the Divine Cities series (or at least this book) is about bucking establishment and rules in an effort to do good instead of serving the status quo.

This book was one of my favorite reads this year, completely blew me out of the water. Absolutely phenomenal.

Now imagine what if India (Saypuri) had been colonized by power-hungry Europeans (Continentals) who had mighty gods on their side helping them. Now imagine a young hero rising up to create a god-killing weapon, ending the colonial rule, and instead creating a new empire suppressing the former rulers and their beliefs.

That's pretty much the setting in a nutshell. After the Divinities were killed by a hero called The Kaj, parts of their cities disappeared in a catastrophic event, especially in Bulikov, the now-called City of Stairs. It is here that Ambassador Shara comes to investigate the death of her fellow Saypuri scholar, and finds herself flung into a conspiracy to bring the Divinities back. It's murder mystery meets fantasy meets political conspiracies, and it was outstanding.