City of Miracles by Robert Jackson Bennett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
“To live with hatred,” says Sigrud, “is like grabbing hot embers to throw them at someone you think an enemy. Who gets burned the worst?”
Surfacing from under the absolute immersion into the world of this series feels almost unreal. I don’t want to say goodbye to it, and I want more — and yet I am so glad to see a perfect conclusion and allow my battered emotions to rest a bit.
Each book of this series felt wonderfully complete and in no need of continuation, but that was because of the secret fear that somehow the wonderful world of the place and characters would be cheapened by the sequels. And that fear proved to be completely unfounded because this book was indeed absolutely necessary, and Bennett finishes even stronger than he started, and it’s all devastatingly and beautifully well-earned, and not a thing is ever phoned in, and the characters remain true to themselves to the end.
“He remembers Shara once saying to him: Violence is a part of our trade, yes. It is one tool of many. But violence is a tool that, if you use it but once, it begs you to use it again and again. And soon you will find yourself using it against someone undeserving of it.”
It’s a book about grief and pain and the weight of life scars in the end. The pain we bear and the consequences of it. The power of both revenge and forgiveness as there is place and need for both. The corruption of this power. The devastation of loss. The destructive cycle of violence. The strength of friendships forged out of shared love and work and suffering and goals. The legacy of what you leave behind — the good and the bad and perhaps something that may end up a bit of both.
“Sometimes I wonder if we’re little more than walking patchworks of traumas, all stitched together.”
What Bennett does excellently here is taking a sidekick seemingly perfect for his initial role as the brawn for the protagonists’ brains — a guy who sees a beyond-comprehension Divine Punisher destroying the city and calmly goes, “Alright, I’ll kill it” — and get into his head and show us the incredible weight of guilt and pain that seemingly invincible Sigrud has carried for decades. And to call if heartbreaking would be cheapening it. The man has not just internalized the pain but truly made it a part of himself, woven into his very nature.
“It is the one thing I still have. Everything else has been taken from me. Everyone else. This is all I am now. I am scrabbling for memories and pieces of the people I have lost. Trying to save the fragments that are left.”
———
“You defy the Divine, you defy death, you defy pain and suffering. That’s the cycle of your life, isn’t it? You throw yourself into dangerous, hopeless situations. These situations punish you mercilessly. Yet you overcome them, and live. But at the end of it, after all your trials and tests, you are left alone. A lone savage in the wilderness, helpless and frustrated. A creature of powerless power is what you are, strength rendered impotent by rage. And you’ve lived these past forty years like a man with one foot nailed to the floor, walking forever in circles.”
———
“You are a creature of constant warfare, Sigrud. You have made a weapon of your sorrow. You have put this weapon to terrible use for many, many years. Only when you set it aside will this miracle release you. Only then will you have any chance of freedom. Freedom to live and die as a normal, mortal man.”
This series is pretty perfect as far as I am concerned. It’s written very well, with amazing setting that is so vivid it truly feels like a real lived-in place. With characters that actually behave like real and complex people, whose inner lives ring true, who are mature adults who know the burden and treasure of experience of years lived, who stay true to themselves while growing and changing with life lived. It’s a world of fantasy that does not strike false notes.
“A better world comes not in a flood,” sighs Ivanya, “but with a steady drip, drip, drip. Yet it feels at times that every drop is bought with sorrow and grief. It ruins us.”
———
“What a tremendous sin impatience is, he thinks. It blinds us to the moment before us, and it is only when that moment has passed that we look back and see it was full of treasures.”
———
“I keep waking up in the night, panicked, and thinking only—what if they’re just like us? What if our children aren’t any better? What if they’re just like us?”
This is one of the best series I’ve read in a long time, easily earning a spot among my favorites. It’s perfect and I love it, even if it gut-punches me at regular intervals.
And this quote needs to be memorized and enacted by all, no exceptions:
“My definition of an adult is someone who lives their life aware they are sharing the world with others. My definition of an adult is someone who knows the world was here before they showed up and that it’ll be here well after they walk away from it. My definition of an adult, in other words, is someone who lives their life with a little fucking perspective.”
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Thank you, Alexandra, Carol and Jonathan (The Blinkovskis, of course) for this wonderful buddy read!
books are life 