City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars “…it is my responsibility to see it.” “Did the street just change? Just at the corner of his eye? Though it seems impossible, he’s sure it did: for one second, he did not see the tumbledown building fronts and deserted homes, but rather immense, slender skyscrapers of gleaming white and gold.” Robert Jackson Bennett’s fantasy-mystery novel City of Stairs (2014) has an interesting premise: for seventy-five years, this hitherto enslaved India-like culture has been occupying the formerly dominant and expansionist Russian-like Continent (AKA the Holy Lands), turning the tables by killing their gods, a side effect of which being that the “miracles” the gods had performed or enabled vanished, including, for instance, most of the works accomplished by the builder god, such that whole temples and other buildings and infrastructure instantly disappeared, along with whatever people happened to be inside them at the time. Even the climate changed. The former enslaved Saypur have imposed on the Continent draconian World Regulations, such that no one can worship, research, or even refer to the former gods or attempt any divine miracles or even study Continental history. While Saypur is thriving as the dominant world culture, the backwards and demoralized Continent languishes in poverty and disease. Needless to say, both the people of Saypur and the Continentals hate and Otherize each other. The plot develops from the brutal murder of Efrem Pangyui, a Saypur reformer/historian who’d been living in the central Continental city of Bulikov, supposedly to research their culture and history. Sent to investigate his murder is Shara Komayd, ace agent for the Saypur Ministry of Foreign Affairs and great-granddaughter of the legendary man who found a way to kill the Continental divinities. Shara is accompanied by her “secretary,” a giant northern “barbarian” Dreyling (Viking analogue) called Sigurd who seems made for violence, has preternaturally acute hearing, knows no frostbite, and picks hot coals with his bare fingers to light his pipe. Sixteen years ago, Shara committed an infamous breach of protocol (exposing the corruption of a high-level official) and hence has been unable to return home to Saypur, having to stay permanently out in the field on the Continent doing dangerous dirty work with Sigurd, cleaning up divine remnants or supernatural beings left behind by the main gods. Complicating her murder investigation in Bulikov is the Continental rich man Vohannes Votrov (“Vo”) with whom she’d had an intense sexual relationship in their university days. Plenty of fraught unfinished business between them. One of the nice things about the novel is how Bennett gradually (and efficiently) reveals the back-history of characters like Vo, Sigurd, and Shara through mostly well-integrated flashbacks written in past tense (the main plot occurs in present tense). Violent action starts after a few chapters, when Shara and Sigurd attend a fund-raising party at Vo’s mansion, and fanatical attackers make things interesting for the bored Sigurd and for the primed reader. (Vo is the leader of the New Bulikov faction, dedicated to improving the quality of life and economic health of the city and bitter foes of the reactionary Restorationist faction, who want to restore the “glorious” past.) I found the main characters compelling, the narrative world original, the themes relevant, the writing vivid, and the plot unpredictable. I enjoyed reading the book: a fantasy novel where the protagonist is a thirty-five-year-old bespectacled woman spy-historian with a giant, ultra-capable male “secretary” operating in an occupied city, with some resonance for contemporary situations like Israel and Palestine: “Say what you like of a belief, of a party, of a finance system, of a power—all I see is privilege and its consequences. States are not, in my opinion, composed of structures supporting privilege. Rather, they are composed of structures denying it—in other words, deciding who is not invited to the table.” I liked the questioning of whether gods direct their followers or vice versa; the concept of different realities for different gods and their followers; the complex situation whereby the former enslaved state/people are now occupying their former oppressors; the “miracles” and effects of the gods; the relationships between Shara and Sigurd, Vo, and even the scary cynical Vinya (Shara’s aunt and boss); the dialogue (mostly) and descriptions (especially); and Shara’s increasing unease with her career path as patriotic agent of the state and the cold-blooded status quo forced on her and the Continent by the realpolitik of people like her aunt. I like how the history of the cultures and characters are worked in little by little via flashbacks and chapter epigraphs as the story develops. I liked Bennett’s imaginative fantasy writing: “The sun, bright and terrible and blazing. It is not the huge ball of light she is so accustomed to: it is like the sky is a sheet of thin yellow paper, and someone is standing behind it holding an oily, flaming torch.” Despite a couple kvetches (e.g., it shouldn't take Shara longer than me to identify the villain, and despite the title stairs play no big role), I enjoyed the novel a lot and look forward to the second and third ones in the trilogy. View all my reviews
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