Nov 062015
 

Cover for City of Blades by Robert Jackson Bennett. Sequel to City of Stairs. A hand reaches up from a burst of lightning, gripping a sword by the blade.Kirkus: “Don’t forget, it was their choice to get involved in this war”: Fantasian Bennett builds another world, convincingly, in which empires rise and fall and blood flows. Bennett clearly has fun doing all the scene-setting and complicating that his tale involves, and while in the end this is a warning against the totalitarian impulse, it makes all kinds of detours into the dark hearts of men—and women, too. Sometimes too talky but richly detailed and expertly plotted. A grand entertainment.