City of Blades by Robert Jackson Bennett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Violence begets violence. War begets war. And pain and trauma is what remains. And there must be a way out, or at least the way to minimize the casualties and the fallout.
“What wild promises we make in order to justify the worst of decisions.”
This is a very dark book, relentlessly somber and serious. But not dark in the almost-gleeful violence way that so many fantasy books adopt to seem “dark” and “gritty” but real dark, the kind that comes from somber resigned contemplation of the worst in us, but thankfully punctuated by the occasional light that at least some carry. It’s sad and emotionally exhausting in its bleak moments, and yet has a slight hopeful note that stops me from reaching for a stiff drink in the end.
“Ah, there’s that word.” She looks out at the ocean. “ ‘Deserve.’ How preoccupied we are with that. With what we should have, with what we are owed. I wonder if any word has ever caused more heartache.”
This is a book focused on the vicious cycle of war, violence and trauma — the cycle that we seem to be doomed to repeat over and over again, with the hope that there will be those who dare to break it. Even if it takes sacrifice.
“In the dark, General Turyin Mulaghesh tries to make herself whole.”
Former General Turyin Mulaghesh is forced out of retirement to take on a secret operation in what remains of Voortyashtan, a former stronghold of the Divinity of war and death, now – like Bulikov in the first book – destroyed and devastated after the former Continental oppressor nations have been conquered and ruled by their former slaves from Saypur. Something strange is afoot in Voortyashtan, and it ends up being messier and more sinister than even Mulaghesh would imagine, and Mulaghesh has seen it all. Mulaghesh, who is not only a scarred war veteran suffering from trauma and PTSD but is also wracked by serious guilt which is well-deserved (her past is dark and she, unlike so many others, actually accepts responsibility for it and tries to do better now). She seems like a good person to shake up a nest of snakes and set things right.
What Mulaghesh ends up uncovering though is worse than a proverbial viper’s nest. And nobody will escape unscarred. If they escape at all.
“A sword. Not a sword, the sword: bound up in that blade is the soul of every sword and every weapon that has ever been, every bullet and every bolt and every arrow and every knife. When the first human raised a stone and used it to strike down its kin this sword was there, waiting to be born: not a weapon, but the spirit of all weaponry, harm and cruelty both endless and everlasting.
Do I, the sword asks her, belong to you?”
What makes Mulaghesh such a compelling character is her decency and clear-headed realism. Having been through war and slaughter (and not the honorable kind), having herself dealt nightmares as basically a child soldier, she does not glorify war, does not see peace as ”but the absence of war.” And moreover, she sees her role as a soldier as the one who serves and gives and not the one who takes and forces others to serve. It’s an unusual view, and that’s what makes all the difference.
“She oversaw executions of her own in Bulikov, of course, but they were far more ceremonial affairs, attended and supervised by civilian officials. What she just witnessed felt as mundane as taking out the day’s trash.”
———“I wasn’t…I wasn’t supposed to die like this,” he says softly. “I was supposed…to have a hero’s death. I’m owed a better death.”
“There’s no such thing as a good death, […],” she says. “It’s just a dull, stupid thing we all have to do eventually. To ask meaning of it is to ask meaning of a shadow.”
This book was even better than City of Stairs, stronger and more confident, with a more mature writing voice, structured seemingly simply but in the way that slowly immerses you into more and more complex web of secrets and revelations. It’s streamlined compared to its predecessor, actually. The worldbuilding continues to shine, this time infodump-free. The relationships between the Continentals and the Saypuri are strained and complex, and subtlety is not lost here. And without any sentimentality or maudlin melodrama or preachiness Bennett rips the readers heart to shreds and delivers gut punches without flinching, mercilessly puts you through a meatgrinder, and it’s masterful, really.
“Yet I now ask of you—are you marauders or are you servants? Do you give power to others, or do you hoard it? Do you fight not to have something, but rather fight so that others might one day have something? Is your blade a part of your soul, or is it a burden, a tool, to be used with care? Are you soldiers, my children, or are you savages?”
5 stars. This will be in the running for the favorite read of 2024, even if it’s still February.
———
Buddy read with Alexandra, Carol and Jonathan (a.k.a. the Blinkovskis). We may need a post-City of Blades PTSD support group, you guys.
books are life 