Review - Slow Gods by Claire North

Slow Gods

Claire North
Orbit, 18 November 2025 
Available as: HB, 422pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy 
ISBN(HB): 9780356526188

I'm grateful to Orbit for sending me a copy of Slow Gods  to consider for review.

After three books telling the story of what happens at home while Odysseus is adventuring, Claire North still has something to say about the gods - though here they are not Olympian deities but mighty computer systems, going about their inscrutable business across the galaxy. One, in particular, is referred to as "the Slow" because it eschews faster-than-light "arc travel". But one might equally accuse them of being "slow" to act against injustice and oppression in human affairs, which are illustrated in the opening sections of this book by the sad story of Mawukana na-Vdnaze. 

Maw has the misfortune to be born in the polity known as the Shine, a nakedly exploitative territory that works its common people to the grave to support the small minority who are Shiny - possessed of an indefinable mix of wealth, flair and assertion which gives them a passport to success. 

Maw does not have Shine, and his fate follows from that, leading him to a transformation ("I am a very poor copy of myself") which makes him, in the eyes of some - including himself - a monster, a ghost. 

The focus of the book is, in part, how Maw deals with that monsterdom, and seeks to be, if a monster, then a monster on the side of the angels - whether that means resisting the Shine, or working hard on the crisis of his time, the foretold collapse of a binary star system. When it occurs, this supernova will create an intense expanding shell of radiation and extinguish life for hundreds of lightyears. This will obliterate many of the Shine worlds, but also the planet Adjumir, on which a galaxy-wide rescue effort focusses.

I loved the way that North describes Adjumir and its people - "describe" is perhaps the wrong world, they conjure it up through stories, songs, language and the behaviour of the Adjumiris and especially Gebre, a spiky archivist who Maw meets on his rescue mission. Throughout this book we get snippets of history, turning into laments for what's been lost, for the fractured lives of exiles in the Adjumiri diaspora.

There's also haunting love story between Gebre and Maw, who only meet on two occasions - a fusion of duty, desire, loss and inevitable fate which gives the book its core, and a core of steel.

Entwined about that core are conspiracies, plots, secrets and lies, as well as the reprehensible behaviour of the Shine authorities. They see the threat of the coming supernova and refuse to act, indeed suppressing knowledge of it in their territories. (Thank goodness no nation today would act like that, ignoring a planet-killing threat for their own selfish convenience!) 

Through all this, we see Maw's gradual coming to terms with what he is and what he's done. This is often through the exploration of the myriad languages of the Galaxy and their customs and social structures, particularly a diverse assembly of genders (expect multiple systems of pronouns). It's a slow awakening for him, the dry tones of the editorial Maw writing this at some later point in his life counterpointing the passion of what he did and said in his story (and we're warned, this won't always be a reliable account). He's a character who finds it hard to forgive himself for some terrible things, something that, perhaps, allows him an insight into the otherwise inscrutable minds of the gods. I recall the frequent pleas in the Bible to a mighty God who yet permits suffering. How long, O Lord, how long? How long will the unrighteous prosper? How long will the innocent be oppressed? Rescue your people! Reveal yourself before the nations in your might, and cast down the evildoer!

A question we, in our day, might well ask...

Slow Gods gives a hint, a flavour, of the true complexity of that prayer, and of what it might take to answer it. Because there's always a cost to action - as Maw discovers one awful night on Adjumir. And it does so in a warm, generous narrative where monsters and failed, imperfect beings may contemplate their own very essence and deeds and seek redemption, even if - as suggested in a coda to the story - that seems to obliterate justice. 

Slow Gods is an enthralling, intelligent and absorbing story which revives the genre of space opera and adds North's distinct tone of moral questioning. A brilliant book. Buy this one as a present for the SF nerd in your life, and if that's yourself, just buy it!

For more information about Slow Gods, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - Pillar of Ash by H M Long

Pillar of Ash (Hall of Smoke/ The Four Pillars, 4)
H M Long
Titan, 16 January 2024
Available as: PB, 336pp audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781803360041

I'm grateful to the publisher for providing me with an advance copy of Pillar of Ash to consider for review.

This is the fourth and final part of what I still think of as the Hall of Smoke sequence, the first part of which introduced us to the formidable warrior priestess Hessa. Subsequent volumes followed the world-changing events which she triggered - indeed I should say worlds-changing events, as gods and goddesses were overthrown, empires clashed and ancient truths uncovered.

Now, as we reach the Fourth Pillar upholding HM Long's world, Hessa steps back and the action focusses on Yske, her daughter. Yske is very unlike Hessa: she considers herself a healer, not a fighter, and has no wish to leave her comfortable hut on the mountain and seek excitement. A bit of a Bilbo Baggins, perhaps, she nevertheless joins a company of adventurers travelling East - mainly, it seems, to look after her brother, Berin rather than from any desire to travel.

Unlike in previous books, the quest is driven this time more by curiosity than by crisis as rumours of a great Tree circulate, and also of something stirring in the Unmade space beyond the world. The East of the Hall of Smoke worlds is little visited: it proves to contain unknown peoples, monsters and, of course, mysteries. And while Yske, Berin and the others didn't travel to confront a great peril, it seems that one is heading for their world - and it has its roots in the strange powers and spirits that Hessa knows so well.

I enjoyed this book, though I have to say that I enjoyed the second half most. An avowed non-warrior is a difficult fit in the Eangen culture of fighters, and for most of the first part of the book Yske's distinctly not at ease, out of place in the somewhat martial company and tending to get the blame when anything goes wrong. Several times I felt she might have been justified in just telling them to **** off, and going back home - after all she only joined the expedition because she was asked, because of what she could contribute as a healer, yet here she is being continually cold-shouldered and devalued because she's not a fighter.

All this changes once... well I can't say exactly what, can I, that would be spoilery, but I will just say that Yske has strengths, knowledge and resourcefulness (and alliances!) that she is able to reach for when things get really tough. It was especially pleasing that, while there is plenty of combat in the book, most of the important action is about building alliances, negotiating, and bringing together unlikely forces against a common threat. Yske proves to excel at all those things and it's great to see how, once she has some freedom of action, she reframes the challenges that face the party to skew away from combat.

In showing what happens next, Long completes the picture that's been building right from the start of Hall of Smoke, a picture which - it's now clear - still had significant gaps. The result is a satisfying conclusion to the whole sequence, adding balance and wholeness to this series of books. 

A good end to this series, a series which has never been less than great fun.

For more information about Pillar of Ash, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - House of Odysseus by Claire North

House of Odysseus
Claire North
Orbit, 24 August 2023
Available as: HB, 420pp, audio, e
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9780356516073

I'm grateful for the publisher for an advance copy of House of Odysseus to consider for review.

I always have high expectations of a Claire North book. House of Odysseus met them, and then went to much further, I'm actually rather stunned - and left floundering a bit, as anything I can say about this book seems superfluous. You should just go and read it.

Trying to put together some cogent thoughts, though, House of Odysseus is North's followup to her Ithaca. Both books are set in the misty time between heroic myth (the siege of Troy is recently finished) and and history and they focus on Penelope, wife of Odysseus, one of the (Greek) heroes of the Trojan war. Odysseus set out for home after the destruction of Troy, but has not yet arrived, leaving Penelope with all kinds of problems. As was established in Ithaca, these include suitors - men who, presuming Odysseus dead, want to marry Penelope and take the kingdom.

I remember first hearing about Homer's Odyssey, the tales about Odysseus making his way home, in primary school when I was 8 or 9. Of course they would have been carefully filtered, but the encounters with magic, monsters and gods still survived as interesting and fantastic stories. I recall though even then being frustrated that it took him so long - ten years! -  to actually get home, and also being rather cross that Penelope had to fend off all those annoying suitors. Why didn't someone just tell them to get lost, I wondered. The intrusion of these unwanted guests into the royal palace, pressing their claims and demanding to be fed and accommodated, seemed dangerous and troubling, out of kilter with a setting which presumed an adorned, functional society, as did Odysseus's protracted journey. It didn't take him ten years to get to Troy, after all.

I wish I had asked my teacher to explain all this. Fifty years on I can see of course that the answer to Penelope's treatment comes in one word - patriarchy - and perhaps that the second - Odysseus travails - might be about the tension in the text between history and myth - but I doubt that a primary school teacher in the mid 70s would have put it that. I'd love to know what the answer would have been though. (Probably "don't be awkward, David"). North is blunt about, especially, the first question. In House of Odysseus, she introduces us to King Menelaus of Sparta, a splendidly drawn monster. Unlike Odysseus, Menelaus went straight home, taking his recaptured wife, Helen, with him. Now, though, he's abroad again, involved in a complex power play for the throne of Mycenae which would make him high king of Greece, so also threatening Penelope's, and Odysseus's, Islands of the West. All of this is cloaked in good intentions - helping Penelope with her problems, sticking up for Menelaus's (alas!) missing brother-in-arms Odysseus, and so forth, and so on, but the threat is clear. 

It's given added menace by the plight of Helen herself.

What exactly happened to Helen after Troy? As one might expect, it's not nice. We see here here a Helen who is cowed, tamed and, in Penelope's appalled eyes, just less. We're let in on a few secrets courtesy of Aphrodite, goddess of love and sex, who's the narrator of this book, so we know that Helen has been - is being - beaten and raped by her loving husband. There is still an enigma to her though, and Penelope recognises a survivor when she sees one. The two had been close, but grew apart - 'No one told Helen that she would grow up to be royal, regal, wise, learned or revered, so it didn't really occur to her childlike mind that these might be aspirations to seek'. 

Penelope's own role here is, as in Ithaca, constrained. Regarded by the men around her as other, lesser, a mere piece of property or perhaps (by the suitors, by Menelaus) a piece on the board, nevertheless she's the one with the practical nous and the sense of responsibility to keep things going. Think of a woman who makes sure there's food on the table and that the kids have clothes to wear - even if that means getting beaten for finagling the wages out of her man's pocket before he can spend them at the pub on drink. The tired one. The woman with no time for herself, who gets little sleep, who is invisible yet indispensable. The one who's going to sort out the various messes here, including talking down Orestes, killer of his own mother, who has returned to Ithaca haunted by the Furies. Orestes, and his sister Elektra, are Menelaus's quarry, his excuse to assume supreme kingship.

The one who, if she has to step out of the shadows, may be accepted in a crisis, but who will be punished later for overstepping.

Before we get to that point, though, there's a murder to solve and delightfully the story turns a shade of Whodunnit with clues, suspects and a tight timescale (Penelope has just three days to produce a suitable culprit). I could North having fun importing the conventions of detective fiction here ('Now she is done -  now she will depart. She gives a little nod of her head while turning away, but still Penelope has one last enquiry...') while keeping the story true to its mythic nature. (I can imagine a whole spinoff line of Penelope murder mysteries which would be glorious). The character, as North depicts her, is just so compelling, whether sleuthing, sparring verbally with Menelaus (who recognises her as an enemy - though be warned he plots how he will 'take' her once she is defeated), holding together a delicate alliance of women (and even the odd man) necessary to keep the island safe, just keeping up appearances - or managing the complexities of the situation that faces her in this book (as challenging an imbroglio as Jeeves ever confronts in PG Wodehouse (another echo of which: look out for old King Laertes and his love of pigs and his desire to be back at his farm tending them).

Penelope is supremely skilful at this sort of generalship, an accomplished strategios. Here is how North has Aphrodite describes that: 'It is only on those rare occasions when she perhaps plays a skilled opponent at tavli and sees a cunning trap, a clever little move, and cannot stop herself, cannot suppress the beating of her heart and the twitch of the smile on her lips, that she shimmers. She glows with excitement, and take it from me, excitement and arousal are often of the same fluttering breath, the same licked lips, the same wide eyes, the same hot flushed cheeks. Odysseus saw this in his wife, before he sailed to Troy, only once. But there was never enough time in the day for games, and then he was gone. This then is the light that now shines upon Penelope's face...' (Trust the goddess of love to spot that glint of beauty that comes from confidence and mastery of the task).

None of this is without cost to Penelope, of course. Part of her mastery is her busyness, her willingness to put in - her knowledge of the necessity of putting in - the effort. Suitors can while away their time drinking or sleeping, they can go back to their homes to be pampered, to be the centre of things. ('There is no feast served in the palace, no formal gathering of men, but there are still suitors, guards, soldiers, kings and maids to be fed') Penelope is always, as I have said, so very tired.

The writing in House of Odysseus is, as ever from North, glorious - she can simply make words dance on the page - whether it's particular passing remarks ('the kind of blade a process should never carry, and which all princesses should') or the way she charms her characters to life. I'd especially note the vivid way she gives voice to Aphrodite. North excels at portraying her, almost entirely through voice and side comments rather than actions because she (and the other gods) are unable to intervene much in events (she does on a few key occasions). This Aphrodite comes across very much as a shrewd, experienced woman, one with an eye for a warrior's nicely toned body ('The next door is answered by Iason, he of the lovely neck and really rather dishy arms'), interested in either sex and in most forms of erotic activity (so long as everyone is willing - 'I do not ask people who are not interested...') It feels in some ways like a very modern sensibility, but North makes it seem utterly consistent with the mythological Aphrodite, a fusion that you'd think was nigh on impossible but, read this, see how North pulls it off!

Just a pure brilliant wonderful gorgeous book, a stunning read, my favourite of the year so far (and anything that's better than this will take some doing).

For more information about House of Odysseus, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - The Foxglove King by Hannah Whitten

The Foxglove King (The Nightshade Crown, Book One)
Hannah Whitten  
Orbit, 9 March 2023
Available as: HB, 466pp, audio, e
Source: Advance copy and audio subscription
ISBN(HB): 9780356521237

I'm grateful to Orbit for an advance copy of The Foxglove King to consider for review.

In the city of Dellaire, the lower orders groan to support King, clergy and nobles who will have the best of everything for themselves.

In the city of Dellaire, bored, decadent aristocrats dose themselves with deadly poisons obtained form illicit death-dealers.

In the city of Dellaire, in vaults deep below the Citadel, a death cult guards the body of a cursed goddess.

And war is coming.

I loved the world building and sheer gothicness of Whitten's new novel, from the seedy docksides to the gilded chambers of the Citadel, all shot through with the odour of death. Woven into the narrative is a divine tragedy - it's certainly not a divine comedy - tracing the city's history and that of its religion in extracts from sacred texts. They describe a war between the gods, whose effects remain very real and very important centuries later. In practical terms, that war left the world contaminated with a substance called 'mortem", the very essence of death, which has to be managed and channelled by a special order of monks, the Presque Mort. 

Others are forbidden to meddle with it, although few have the talent in any case. One who does though is Lore, a young woman who is part spy, part poison trafficker and generally a rogue through and through. Towards the end of this book, in a crisis, Lore takes a momentous decision for reasons which are, she freely admits, completely selfish. That's basically Lore in a nutshell: you're not going to guilt her into doing the right thing for the greater good - she needs to be bribed, blackmailed or coerced, the latter being the method chosen early in the book by those who wish to use her.

Given that background and that character, I must admit that I was a little disappointed by what followed. Lore - basically a sewer rat from the bad part of town who's been working as a spy for one gang of traffickers, embedded (um, literally) with another - is introduced into the wealthy setting of the Citadel with orders to spy on a nobleman. What follows is a series of social and religious engagements, with plenty of conversation between Lore and a slew of nobles, but actually little in the way of action, apart from a couple of set piece events, for most of the middle part of the book. It's established early on that Lore is an experienced and accomplished spy. Also that she has dark abilities (in one memorable scene she raises a dead horse). Yet so much of the story is confined to mildly probing questions of those around her. Even when Lore makes some allies and her investigation switches up a gear, a great deal of time is spent in the library rather than in snooping or other more spy-y activity. Yes'm we get Lore's rather frustrated inner monologue, and there is a love triangle going on,  but I felt there was little in this section to advance the plot.

I must add that the book does lift in its final third, when a number of plot threads come together. There is action. There is hair-raising peril. There is dark magic. Also, multiple levels of betrayal, the revelation of hidden hands and one particular reveal about Lore herself and her role in things that I really hadn't seen coming. 

But still, I felt that this book could have been more. And that's not because of the difference between The Foxglove King and Whitten's previous novels - For the Wolf and For the Throne. I get that they are meant to be different - while those books are darkly romantic, tainted fairytales, and yes, I love that kind of thing, I also enjoy more conventional fantasy which The Foxglove King is albeit with a nice gothic edge. They're not meant to occupy the same genre space, and that's fine.

Still, if you enjoy a competent, cool heroine and a setting that has something of the night about it, this may well be just what you need to read.

For more information about The Foxglove King, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - The Thousand Eyes by AK Larkwood

The Thousand Eyes (The Serpent Gates, 2)
AK Larkwood
PanMacmillan, 17 February 2022
Available as: HB, 400pp, e, audio
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9781529032796

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of The Thousand Eyes to consider for review.

The Thousand Eyes was for me a welcome return to the Maze and to the myriad worlds that connect into it, first explored in The Unspoken Name. And also, of course, to my favourite apostate orc priestess, Csorwe, and her girlfriend Shuthmili. It's a tricky relationship, albeit perhaps easier since Csorwe abandoned her former mentor Belthandros Sethennai. Both Csorwe and Tal Charossa, Sethennai's other apprentice, competed for Sethennai's favour and that was a VERY complex threesome indeed. 

With Sethennai out of the picture, a girl's still got to make a giving and at the start of the book we see Csorwe, Shuthmili and Tal engaging in a spot of Indiana Jones style temple robbery in a cursed world reached through the Maze.

The only problem is, in this universes, "abandoned" temples can harbour more than spiders, snakes and traps. This a world where the gods are real, and terrible. And they may inhabit you (as we see from the inner dialogue Shuthmili has with the entity she addresses as her "corruptor"). I loved the contrast in this opening part of the book between the banal everyday chatter of the three fortune-hunters and the weird, creepy, and frankly terrifying world that are navigating. Fantasy doesn't have to be high, sonorous and dusty - Larkwood expertly spins a tale that just feels real because of the triviality that offsets all the shadows and terror.

So far, The Thousand Eyes may sound similar to The Unspoken Name. Which would be absolutely fine by me - it's a great read. But Larkwood delivers still more. A third of the way through the book, a Thing happens which completely overturns the narrative, upping the stakes considerably and placing our friends into a very different situation. It's frustrating, but I don't want to say exactly what, as it would spoil the story. 

I will say though that how things turn out will depend on the very particular strengths and weaknesses of the different characters, especially Tal and Csorwe, and on the tensions and stresses in those apparently mundane relationships that we saw earlier. It's a story of love and loss and devotion and one of waiting and hoping - but also of how those things, pushed without limit, can sour into hatred and pride. A certain goddess here has had enough of the waiting and hoping and decides to take action - but with terrible consequences. A certain mage bears her loss and remains devoted to her lover, but finds she must commit terrible crimes to achieve her ends. A certain rogue... oh, well, it's Tal... has a lot of time to ponder his life choices and to regret those moments when he played the hero. (Tal, especially, is amazingly depicted here - his emotional quirks, his stormy relationship with his family, his love-hate relationship with Sethennai, a bewitching villain if ever there was one).

It's a page-turning, life-filling monster of a book which, once begun, you simply HAVE to finish. And that finish is cruel and filled with loss: but as we know, 'What is saved is saved only for a moment. All voices sound in silence, but before the echoes die away, their sound is sweet'.

I think it will be a long time before the echoes of The Unspoken Name and The Thousand Eyes die away. And they are, indeed, very sweet.

For more information about The Thousand Eyes, see the publisher's website here and AK Larkwood's site here.

#Review - Temple of No God by HM Long

Temple of No God
HM Long
Titan Books, 25 January 2022
Available as: PB, 368pp, audio, e
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781789095562 

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy of Temple of No God to consider for review.

Temple of No God picks up the story begun in last year's Hall of Smoke. Hessa, High Priestess of the goddess Eang, betrayed and killed her deity when the new god, Thvnder, arose. Ten years later, as a leader among the tribes who previously worshipped Eang, Hessa is older and wiser, but as handy with an axe as ever. Offered an opportunity to interfere in the politics of the once mighty Arpan Empire, Hessa travels south with a few trusted friends and her estranged husband, Imnir, into the heart of the Empire - albeit an Empire in chaos, with at least three rivals for the throne, and a new cult of the god Larun rising which is apparently able to draw power from the very land, leaving it blighted and dead.

I really enjoyed Temple of No God. Long provides, again, what worked so well in Hall of Smoke: Hessa as the main protagonist, a woman skilled in combat, confident, as ready to walk the otherworldly High Halls and imbibe their honey-scented magic as to endure brutal marches across remote mountains, hold council with kings and emperors, or take in an orphan who needs protection.

But this book isn't just more of the same. Hessa has aged and matured. The revelations of Hall of Smoke destroyed out the secure footings of Hessa's worldview, leaving her distrusting both purported gods and treacherous men. They also made her responsible for a lot that she might wish she wasn't - such as the continued deception practised by her and Imnir on the new priesthood of Thvnder. And there are other problems that can't, in general, be dealt with by the stroke of an axe or a bit of magic - the uneasy tribal alliance among the Eangi, or those those who still see Hessa as a deicide, worthy of death. 

The events of Temple of No God add new layers to this - grand politics and concerns over the future of the magical realm, the Penumbra, Arpa's equivalent to the High Halls, where things have gone amiss since the death of the Arpan gods. There are also personal issues. Hessa is at the same time both bloodthirsty - at the start of the book we see her leading a raid, as is the custom of her people, happy to destroy a village and loot it - and afflicted by conscience, unsure of her place with her difficult husband and feeling her lack of a child. 

So I wasn't surprised that Hessa rather jumped at the offer from the Arpan envoys. Yes, it brings great opportunities (even if there is also - implicitly - great danger if the power struggle in the South comes out the wrong way) but more importantly, it's a diversion from the mundane, an adventure, a distraction from some of these problems. 

Or perhaps not... there's a great deal going on in Temple of No God, with both a returned cast of characters and some new ones caught up in the struggle. Here you'll find brutal, blow by blow combat; anguished partings and loss; double-crossing; unlikely allies and always, always, a galloping pace of story that keeps the reader deeply engaged. Hessa is a remarkable protagonist, and the sole point of view here, so tends to remain at the centre of the action (this only fails once when, towards the end of the novel, she's out of things for a a few hours while a LOT of stuff is going on and I was left wishing I knew just what had happened to everyone else in the meantime).

Overall, a vigorous ands satisfying continuation of the earlier story and one that promises more to come. There are signs of trouble (perhaps) in the future: Imnir's warning to Hessa about taking too much power from the High Halls, alliances that are convenient here but may be less so in future, and some rocky relationships that will surely need care and attention, something hard to guarantee in the general mayhem that is Hessa's life.  I look forward to seeing a middle-aged Hessa face some of these in a further book!

For more information about Temple of No God, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - The Broken God by Gareth Hanrahan

Cover by Thea Dumitriu

The Broken God (Black Iron Legacy, Book Three)
Gareth Hanrahan
Orbit, 20 May 2021
Available as: PB, 578pp, e
Read as: Advance PB copy supplied by the publisher
ISBN(PB): 9780356514369

I'm SO grateful to Orbit for an advance copy of one of my most anticipated books of 2021.

The Broken God follows from The Gutter Prayer and The Shadow Saint, chronicling the prosperous manufacturing and trading city of Guerdon - a place where commerce, magic and industry mingle easily. The Godswar has finally come to Guerdon, but in contrast to the apocalyptic impact visited on other battlefields, an uneasy truce has been brokered with different areas of the city occupied by forces from Haith (a Northen power based on necromancy), Ishmere (home to mad gods) and Lyrix (a nation of pirates and dragons).

Action in The Broken God is chiefly focussed on Cari (Carillon Thay, who featured in Book 1, with less of a part in Book 2) and on Rasce, the human amanuensis of one of those dragons, who has been planted in Guerdon to reap the profits of the occupation ('The dragon takes what he wants'). Cari has left Guerdon carrying an ancient tome of magic (AKA 'the f****ng book') to trade her way into the wizard city of Khebesh where she hopes to find a cure for her friend Spar, who was turned into a new part of the city at the end of Book 1 (keep up!) 

Cari's journey spirals into disaster, with an ally of the dragons chasing her for vengeance, power-hungry alchemists chasing her to find out what she's made of (literally) and exploit her connection to Spar, and... well, another old enemy also chasing her for vengeance (she killed a goddess). Rasce's story is like a supernatural twist on The Godfather - the dragons very much run their own organisation within the Lyrixian forces. It's all very family, with Rasce serving the dragon called Great-Uncle, who sets clear expectations of profit (the dragon takes what he wants). Soon, Rasce is allying with elements in Guerdon's restless underclasses of thieves and ghouls to seek power and wealth. 

Hanrahan uses these two very different strands adroitly to keep the reader guessing, and the story flowing, both echoing and undercutting the style and themes of the first two books. The goings-on in Guerdon, featuring Rasce but also an espionage sub-plot as the authorities of the city try to tame him, reminded me more of the first book (which introduced Cari, Spar and their ghoul friend, Rat, in a doomed heist attempt) than the second (which largely followed the Haithi in their power plays). Again, there's more behind what happens than is apparent at first. Cari's adventures are rather different again - away from Guerdon and facing new threats from ragged gods, there is a real sense of her diminishment. Cari's lost the power that her bond with Spar gave her, and she's vulnerable again. In that vulnerability we discover a lot about Cari's history, her time as a sailor and why she fled Guerdon that first time. The world has changed since then, and a lot of what she remembers is now lost - when she discovers fragments of that early life, will they help her, or lead her into sentimentality and danger?

It's hard to convey the sense in this book of hard, or no, choices, of taint, a kind of moral culpability which infects everyone, Cari included, to some degree. There are really no heroes, only opponents. And there are no villains (one or two fairly minor characters excepted, perhaps) - only more opponents. Artolo, for example, wants revenge on Cari. He behaves in a pretty unpleasant way, but then Cari did cut off his fingers. Cari, equally, is ready to bargain with unspeakable horrors and to aid them, if it will get her into Khebesh. Rasce isn't all bad: the Guerdon thief Baston, who allies with him, tells himself that Rasce might be persuaded to serve a noble purpose - and justifies compromise in pursuit of that. The book conveys a unique atmosphere of shiftiness, compromise, failure, and decay. 

Behind all this - somewhere - are the dreadful Black Iron Gods, and the tyrannical gods of Ishmere, but this is a world where people think they know how to deal with gods. Gods, here, are a kind of technology and none are so wild or so dangerous that somebody won't try to make use of them. The profusion of divinity emphasises, rather than overshadowing, human motivations, plots and struggles - while raising the stakes, the consequences of success or failure. If the gods are a technology, it's a deadly technology, a sort of nuclear-level dangerous technology which can leave whole lands haunted by monstrosities and fragments of jostling realities, a landscape worse than if it were simply made sterile. That's the world that Cari's struggling to travel through, subject to one horror after another, and it is a bad place to be, but the really scary truth she has to face is the ruin she seems to bring and the guilt that comes from that when the consequences come home to those she thinks of as friends.

The law of the Black Iron Gods seems to be the law of unintended consequences, of good intentions gone sour, of enmeshed and conflicting interests, of chains of events that nobody can foresee or control. It makes reading The Broken God into a fascinating, addictive and haunting experience where a distaste for what almost everyone is doing is finely balanced with a sneaking desire for them to push on further. To betray. To devastate. 

The reader becomes complicit with what's happening, awful though it is.

It's the sort of book which, after you've finished it, doesn't so much make you feel unclean, as in need of an exorcism. In short, then, wonderful stuff, and a series that shows so signs of flagging, rather of really getting going. I can't recommend it too strongly.

For more information about The Broken God, see the publisher's website here. 

#Review - Hall of Smoke by HM Long

Cover by Julia Lloyd

Hall of Smoke
HM Long
Titan Books, 19 January 2021
Available as: PB, 415pp, audio, e
Source: Advance PB copy 
ISBN: 9781789094985

I'm grateful to Titan Books for an advance paperback copy of Hall of Smoke to consider for review.

The term "mountain top experience" is often used in a religious context to describe an encounter between believers and their god (think Moses being given the Commandments). You climb up the mountain, away from mundane matters, into a liminal space, encounter the Deity, and return with a message or a mission (or perhaps simply changed). 

At the start of Hall of Smoke, the warrior priestess Hessa is seeking such an experience. She has climbed the mountain and made a sacrifice (of her own blood) but hears nothing from Eang, Goddess of War, to whom Hessa is devoted - and who Hessa has offended by not killing the stranger Omaskat who took refuge in her village as she was ordered. 

But Hessa receives no reply, only dust and ashes as her home, and the sacred Hall of the title, are destroyed by raiders from the North. It is clear what her duty is: to chase Omaskat down and kill him as she should have done in the first place. Thus begins a frenetic hunt across the Norse-tinged lands of Eangen and Algatt and the somewhat Roman seeming territory of Arpa - not forgetting trespass on the heavenly High Halls of the Otherworld themselves. The High Halls are where the dead of this world go for eternity, and loss of Eang's favour risks Hessa's place there. So she must deal with Omaskat, whatever her feelings, regardless of the laws of hospitality, heedless of the cost.

Hessa is well suited to the task, however. She's not just a priestess but a warrior priestess, trained from childhood to fight, and equipped by her goddess with a magical fire that can heal her own wounds and destroy her enemies. One of the joys - albeit a brutal joy - of this book is to see the formidable Hessa taking on her enemies, whether using weapons or her divine gifts. Another is her general determination and courage. Hessa has actually lost a lot, her family and way of life having been shattered, but with her quest in view and much more at stake - including the life and soul of a baby committed to her care - she presses on, despite growing doubts and suspicions that Eang has been hess than honest.

What follows is a fast-paced, complex and desperate chase. Hessa finds unexpected allies, and deadly enemies, but she also finds that what she's been told about her world, its gods and its history is rather partial, that the truth is complicated and that powers she knew nothing of are in motion. The story really documents her growing-up, both in her understanding of the world and her place in it and in knowing and choosing to whom, and to what, she gives service. Fighting fiercely is good, but fighting knowingly is better, and perhaps the world is less clearly drawn than it seems.

I hope that doesn't sound too sober and preachy. It really isn't Hall of Smoke is first and foremost a rollicking, combat-rich, fantasy adventure in the very best tradition, infused with a sense of active, interfering divinity redolent of the Norse or Greek mythologies. These are gods and goddesses with plans and schemes, who can be bargained with, tricked and even scared but who are also utterly amoral. In a real sense they don't deserve the service of someone like Hessa but equally, she has to live in the world as she finds it, protect what is precious to her, and prevent even worse things from emerging. What can you do? That's the dilemma at the core of Hall of Smoke, giving the book moral complexity and depth.

Great fun, always engaging, and strongly recommended.

For more information about Hall of Smoke, see the publisher's website here.

Review - The Shadow Saint by Gareth Hanrahan

Illustration by Richard Anderson,
design by Steve Panton LBBG

The Shadow Saint (Black Iron Legacy, 2)
Gareth Hanrahan
Orbit, 9 January 2020
PB, 562pp

I'm grateful to Nazia at Orbit for an advance copy of The Shadow Saint.

"The spy climbs a stair of fire to get to Heaven..."

This is the sequel to Hanrahan's first novel, The Gutter Prayer, which introduced us to the city of Guerdon, its Machiavellian leader, Kelkin, the Godswar which rages abroad (but it's getting closer!) and most particularly to Carillon (Cari) Thay and Eladora Duttin, cousins whose fates are bound up with the city, the imprisoned Black Iron Gods and with the Godswar.

The focus of that book was very much on Cari, a young woman who had run away to sea but was now returned and first seen leading a gang to carry out a daring robbery. Cari, Rat and Spar (who was suffering from a disease that gradually turned him to stone) were caught between political and religious factions, as well as family politics and history, in events that eventually led to a crisis in the affairs of Guerdon and to Rat (having become king of the city's ghouls) trying to kill Cari. Hanrahan has given a detailed recap here - I wish more authors would do that! - which is worth reading before turning to The Shadow Saint.

The Shadow Saint picks up the story shortly after, with more focus on the Godswar. We see the city of Severast, recently fallen to the conquering forces of the Mad Gods (the fires of sacrifice still smoulder) We see the grim, necromantic kingdom of Haith, which is fighting a rearguard action against the conquerors. Haith's politics will play a central role in this story, which focusses on Eladora, rather than Cari: sensible, dutiful Eladora, who has gone from her studies at the University to working for Effro Kelkin, leader of the Industrial Liberal party and the wily fox at the centre of Guerdon's government. (She's also learning magic, under the tutelage of the formidable Dr Ramegos).

While the forces of the deranged gods advance, Guerdon is bickering over politics and religion, leading to an election, and schemes are afoot in the Haithi embassy, focussing on that nation's crown and on family succession. Oh and there is, as the quote above implies, a spy in Guerdon (actually, there are many, but this one is particularly crucial).

It all makes for a complex, atmospheric (you can almost taste the alchemical pollution that drifts on Guerdon's air...) and tactile book, the reader occupying something of a privileged position in being privy to most - but not all - of the writhing plots, which enfold and stymie one another continually (sometimes to darkly humorous effect - Guerdon's gods are widely regarded as stupid, and at one moment they carry out an act that is so misconceived and self defeating as to be near impossible to convey: fortunately I don't have to try as it would also be a huge spoiler). It's a bit Smiley meets HP Lovecraft  meets Pratchett, the latter especially in the way that stupidity, bad luck and sheer obduracy ensure those best-laid plans - whether Kelkin's, devised at his back table in the coffee house, or Lys's, intelligence chief of Haith - really do gang aft agley.

Guerdon and its world are, as ever, brilliantly realised - this is a fantasy city with a Metro system, representative democracy (oiled by generous campaign contributions) and a manufacturing sector (Guerdon thrives on its arms trade, supply both sides in the war). A city where the Gods are kept weak, lest they join the war. A world of modern naval fleets with unspeakable, alchemical weapons and undead warriors wielding ancestral, soul-hungry swords. It's hard, as I said above, to convey just how right it all seems, how natural. The characters are also excellent - Cari, who has become something like a saint (though her god is the New City, not a divine being) has taken up the foul-mouthed mantle of Saint Aleena, my favourite character from The Gutter Prayer: 'The fucking fuckers are trying to fuck with us' as she sagely observes more than once. (Note to self: redact that before submitting review to Amazon...)

In all, it's joyous mayhem with a coherent, metaphysically literate, idea of godhood and the supernatural at its centre, characters who are, even if monstrous and constrained by unspeakable fates, sympathetic - and throughout, a sense of unease, a sense that dreadful things can happen at any moment...

For more about the book, see the publisher's webpage here.

Review - Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse

Trail of Lightning (The Sixth World, 1)
Rebecca Roanhorse
Hodder & Stoughton, 28 November 2019
PB, 304pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy of this book via NetGalley.

I love a book with a big, bold premise. Trail of Lightning certainly delivers this - Maggie Hoskie is a Native American monster hunter in a post-apocalyptic world where climate change ('the Big Water') has inundated much of the US and left the Diné (Navajo) people clinging to a precarious existence on part of their ancestral land, albeit (and ironically) subject to endless drought.

Maggie herself is an orphan, rescued and raised by the god Neizgháni - who trained her as an apprentice hunter before disappearing. Put baldly that sounds a lot of backstory in a short book (and there is more) but Roanhorse very skilfully parcels it out, only revealing details and facts as they are needed and allowing the reader to piece things together. The setup gives Maggie a degree of vulnerability - she is alone and mortal, facing supernatural threats that don't pull their punches, and her past has left her unpopular among the cops ('Law Dogs'), gangs, mercenaries and trade bosses who vie for power in Dinétah. There's sexism, too, highlighted when she's negotiating with a family over the price for monster-hunting job when their daughter has been snatched away by a 'tsé-naayéé'. ('Maybe they don't want to pay because I'm a woman').

I was impressed by the gritty reality of the world that Roanhorse describes, the impoverishment and general air of scrabbling for existence in a hard world. Of course it's not too much of a stretch to suggest that for Native Americans that is less an awful dystopian future than a version of their present lives and that they are already living in a post-apocalyptic world. Indeed, as described here the Big Water and its aftereffects have brought benefits such as independence ('Dinetáh risen') and - for some - even wealth. That's not a point overtly made - the story is really too fast paced to allow much time for such comparisons (though nor does the book gloss over injustices and marginalisation, past or present). Indeed it is pretty much contentious action from introducing Maggie on that first monster hunt to a final, awful confrontation with gods, monsters and vigilantes.

In between she's basically on the run, collecting a ragged assortment of allies who (of course) have their own agendas and trying to work out what's going on. Something really bad is at large, slaughtering people in the towns and leaving that trail of lightning. Even the best organised places aren't immune.

To solve the mystery, Maggie has to dig deep into her people's traditions, telling us in the course of that of a fantastical collection of gods and heroes from the old stories who are now, it seems, all to real in Dinetáh (I loved that Roanhorse makes no concessions to the English speaker, or indeed, review writer or typesetter, using spellings that I literally can't find the symbols for - for example, a word like 'wóshdee' where the two final "e"s ought to have both an acute accent é and a little mark underneath ę. My keyboard will allow one or the other but not both at once.) I loved this sense of thinness between two worlds, of the inhabitants of story walking this world, and it's done very plausibly (one god, Ma'ii/ Coyote, is a particularly natty dresser).

Maggie herself is a wonderful character - resourceful, slightly bitter in a way that's almost noir ('I lean back and start at the ceiling of the truck, asking the heavens for help dealing with men with their heads up their assess. I'm pretty sure no help will be forthcoming, but I feel the need to ask anyway') and always, always, slightly disappointed by those around her but carrying on anyway. She doesn't know everything, she's not always right (for example, she misjudges one young man she meets - he's handy with a gun, and she's surprised when her turns out to be gay) but is always ready to admit that and do better. Is she perhaps a bit overfamiliar with present day cultural references and technology? perhaps - but who knows what's current in 2030+ Dinetáh and that's intrinsically more plausible than gods and monsters anyway.

Overall then: I loved this book. I galloped through it, enjoying the buildup to the finalé, caring about the characters, refreshed by its not being another Western European strongmen in furs type of fantasy, and thoroughly liking the plot, characters and setting.

Best of all there is a sequel coming (the e-ARC had an extract in it, hopefully the publishers books does too) and I am keen to read that.

Review - Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Gods of Jade and Shadow
Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Jo Fletcher Books, 23 July 2019
HB, 352pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance review copy of Gods of Jade and Shadow via Amazon Vine.

It begins with a woman...

It begins in the 1920s.

It begins in Mexico.

Casiopea Tun is a young woman, very much the poor and unwanted relation in a sprawling family living in a remote town. The Revolution has left Mexico avowedly secular, but little has changed in Uukumil; by command of the local priest, women are to cover their shoulders at all times.

Casiopea has a life of drudgery with few prospects of improvement. She years to dance to jazz music or to drive a car, but none of this seems likely. Reflecting on the books she's read, she strongly rejects the idea that she's a Cinderella - she isn't waiting for any Prince, but things will get better!

When change comes, Casiopea is proved right - it's not a prince who disrupts things but a Mayan death god, Hun-Kamé, with whom her family fortunes become tangled. So begins a sort of road-trip (more a rail-trip, actually) across Mexico, Casipea pursued by her indolent cousin Martín, Hun-Kamé by his murderous brother Vucub-Kamé. The fugitives encounter a series of natural and supernatural obstacles including villains, demons, magicians and killer plants as Moreno-Garcia weaves a story that is part fairytale, part heist, based on Mayan legends and myths but infused with the spirit of the Jazz Age: the spirit of an indomitable young woman who feels her time has come and who simply won't be dragged back to her grey town to wash floors for the rest of her life.

I really enjoyed the relationship the Moreno-Garcia sketches between Casiopea and Hun-Kamé - no, I know what you're thinking, but it isn't quite what you expect - as well as the matter-of-fact way she integrates the Mayan past with a very materialist present. There's no idealisation of a society that practised human sacrifice, but nor is there any patience for the discrimination she shows against Indigenous peoples. In the persons of Hun-Kamé and Vucub-Kamé we effectively hear an ongoing debate about the past and the future, and Casiopea herself contributes to that, effectively having the last word on many occasions.

I would perhaps have liked to hear more about Casiopea's mother who is an important character early on and, I felt, could have had more to say about the situation she and her daughter were in. And I definitely felt at the end that she should have had more recognition. That apart, the book is fun, often raucous fun, as a young women grows up, learns about herself and teaches some lessons in return to those who are older but not necessarily much more wise.

It is, in many respects, a fairytale, with Casiopea showing the best fairytale virtues of self-reliance, courage, quick thinking and kindness, despite living in a world which has treated her very harshly.

The last book I read by Moreno-Garcia was The Beautiful Ones, a romance of manners set in a magic-infused vaguely alternate Europe. Gods of Jade and Shadow is miles away from this in almost all respects, and overall I'd say it succeeds brilliantly, showcasing this author's versatility.

Strongly recommended.

For more information about the book, including links to buy the book, see the publisher's website here.

Review - The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie

Jacket design by Lauren Panepinto

The Raven Tower
Ann Leckie
Orbit, 28 February 2019
HB, 411pp

I'm grateful to Orbit for a free advance copy of The Raven Tower.

THERE. WILL. BE. A. RECKONING.

My First Law of Book Blogging is that the best books, the ones that really wow me, that keep me awake till the small hours and have me tired on my train the next day, are the hardest to review. There are lots reasons for this, sometimes different ones for different books. Sometimes the book is so good I'm just speechless. Sometimes the book simply is the best expression of itself. There's probably a way to express this mathematically but for me it comes down to, what can I say about this that doesn't actually take away from the unique, wonderful edifice the author has made?

That is certainly true of The Raven Tower, but as if if things weren't already tricky enough, Ann Leckie also does things in the book.

She does things to her protagonists.

She does things to her setting.

She does things to the reader.

And frankly, she does things to the genre. To be too clear about these things would reduce the impact of the book in ways that the term "spoiler" doesn't even begin to capture. So I have to be very circumspect now, and so this is a hard review to write, but I have to try because I do want you to read this book.

The first thing to say is, I think, that The Raven Tower is not at all what it seems.

The package may appear familiar. There is a land - Iraden - with a ruler ("the Raven's Lease") bound to die for his god. The heir, Mawat, hurries home to take his father's place. There are enemy armies in the South, beyond the Silent Forest, and strangers in the capital about who knows what business. Iraden's gods (the Raven, the Silent) have turned elusive. We even have a map, showing a vaguely Mediterranean-like geography, with the capital city of Iraden, Vastia, sited on the channel where the Shoulder Sea connects with the Northern Ocean.

Almost as the story begins, however, Leckie begins to do her things.

Who, exactly is, narrating? Not Mawat or his lieutenant, Eolo. Rather, the narrator seems to be addressing them (specifically, Eolo.) "I first saw you" the book begins "when you rode out of the forest". The story continues to be told to "you", despite the fact that "you" are often the subject of it. It's as if the narrator is, at some later time, recounting what he saw and inferred of Eolo's reactions, thoughts and history. Not entirely omniscient, but privy to a great deal of information, this narrator is also aware of other characters, other events - but what they choose to tell is selective.

So - and I think it's safe to be plain about this - Leckie is doing is adopting a very unusual viewpoint. In places it's not quite first person (when the narrator tells their own history) in others it's not quite second person, and indeed when they are telling Eolo about the doings of some other individual, it becomes not quite third person either. That sounds very tricksy and clever but it really isn't, I think it reads very naturally but it does give the whole book an air of distance, a very particular tone. This narrator has a clear and reasoned style, and the way Leckie tells the story enables many issues to be addressed - reasoned over, debated - which would often be ignored in fantasy.

For example, a central theme here - unsurprisingly, given the importance of those elusive gods - is how gods can do what they do, what their limits are, and what dangers they face. A god may "speak something true", altering the universe, but had better be careful that he, she or they can back up their statement or they risk draining their power and ceasing to be. And that takes us to the nature of language, what can be said and what can't. All things absolutely germane to the story being told here, which may begin with a blast on the horn of epic fantasy, as it were, the Kingdom in peril and all that - promising politics, backstabbing and treason - but gradually transitions to something much more complicated, less a horn solo than a fugue exploring variations on the nature of reality, the long term - and I really mean, long term - history of the land, the development of trade and above all, the interconnectedness of things.

Here we see the development of life, the arrival of humankind, the gradual evolution of interdependence between peoples, nations and gods and the drive for power. Leckie is actually using an enormous canvas, and the story she's telling is far from straightforward. Indeed, exactly what story she is telling is one of those things I don't want to say too much about. I will just say that while that horn of epic fantasy never falls completely silent, by the end of the book it's as though it has fallen into the hands of quite different musicians and when I realised what had happened I gasped at what Leckie had actually done.

(Sorry if that sounds convoluted but I am trying to give an impression of this book without telling you any secrets).

The Raven Tower is a breathtaking achievement, really, a really distinctive book that simply demands to be read. Marat and Eolo are colourful, engaging characters and Leckie realises them well, rooting their backgrounds in the reality of the world she's created (Mawat a born leader but headstrong, worrying the nobles that he might take after his domineering father; Eolo with his own secrets). That world benefits from the "deep time" perspective we're privy to - it's a fantasy world with fossils. A place where shallow tropical seas have converted to limestone hills. Where the nutritional needs of humans are investigated by gods in scientific terms alongside demands for blood sacrifice. This feels like a real world where things work, for the most part, as you'd expect, and where they can be understood. It's a world where things develop, rather than being stuck for thousands of years in a sort-of Iron Age.

Reading this book felt at times as though Leckie was reconstructing fantasy itself while she span her story, as though she was reconstructing it by spinning her story. I thought that was brilliant though I'd expect some will be uneasy with what she's doing - change can be difficult. It's also great fun and in places - especially the dry dialogues between The Myriad and The Strength and patience of the Hill - (two of the other gods encountered here) actually rather funny and even touching, as a friendship builds over literally millions of years.

I really can't recommend this strongly enough. You just have to read it.

Review: City of Blades by Robert Jackson Bennett

City of Blades
Robert Jackson Bennett
Jo Fletcher Books, 7 January 2016
PB, 448pp

I'm grateful to Amazon for sending me a copy of this book as part of their Vine programme.

I loved Bennett's City of Stairs published in 2015 - it was so fresh, innovative and immersive - so was excited to see the sequel and delighted to get a copy for review.

It is five years since the events of the previous book. General Turyin Mulaghesh has retired from the army of Saypur and gone to live on a tropical beach. Shara Komayd has risen to become Prime Minister (though apparently not for long). Saypur continues to rule the Continent, whose gods it killed to overthrow centuries of colonial rule. But the Continent is complex, a dark continent with many secrets and dangers... so it's not surprising that a seasoned operator like Mulaghesh would be brought back into play when things begin to go wrong. Very much as in City of Stairs, where Komayd was the spy, Mulaghesh is despatched to the city of Voortyashtan (formerly ruled by the Goddess of war and death) to track down a lost agent.  Her arrival triggers a cataclysmic chain of events that force her to confront a grim episode from her past. If the Continent is dark, not all of the darkness comes from the Continentals and their tyrannical gods. Oppression begets reaction and cruelty leads to cruelty.

Building on the earlier book's themes of colonialism and cultural destruction, Bennett again produces  novel that is not just entertaining but engages with some meaty themes - here, military occupation, battle trauma and its aftermath, the sheer messiness of combat leading to rage and a desire for destruction for its own sake (embodied at its purest in the nightmare goddess Voortya and her "sentinels" but also reflected in Sigurd's berserker rage and in other characters too).

That preoccupation makes it rather more melancholy and generally darker than Stairs and perhaps more of a challenging read, although I still loved the book and had to sit up late to finish it. Bennett has a real gift for words: here is description of an automated weapon "An enormous cloud of dust rises up as the PK-512 continues putting hundreds and hundreds of rounds into the skin of the earth, like it's a pressurised water sprayer sawing through limestone." Or those sentinels: "...splintery creations of bone and horn and metal, long and thin and positively lethal-looking, as if someone could teach a knife to float." Nor are the gentler parts of the story any less convincing or less vividly done.

In short, this book lived up to my expectations, with the later part, especially, a white-knuckle read that demands to be taken in one session. Superb fantasy - and things are clearly building to a climax in the final volume.