Mulaghesh stops and looks up into the face of Voortya. The world goes still. There is someone in the statue. It’s the strangest of sensations, but it’s undeniable: there is a mind there, an agency, watching.
It's five years since the events of City of Stairs. Turyan Mulaghesh has kept her promise and retired to a (rather squalid) beach house in Javrat. A request comes from Shara Komayd, who is now Prime Minister. Could Mulaghesh investigate the disappearance of an agent of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who vanished from the city of Voortyashtan -- formerly the stronghold of the Divinity in charge of war and death -- whilst investigating reports of a marvellous substance.
Of course it's not as simple as that. For one thing, the regional governor of Voortyashtan is Mulaghesh's old CO: while serving under him as a teenager, Mulaghesh did some things that she still has nightmares about. For another thing, the harbour of Voortyashtan is being dredged by the Southern Dreyling Company, whose Chief Technology Officer is the daughter of Shara Komayd's secretary and factotum, Sigrud je Harkvaldsson. The 'marvellous substance', which seems to conduct more electricity than should be possible, comes from mines which have been destroyed. There have been some suspicious, almost ritualistic murders. And somebody may be trying to resurrect the feared Voortyashtani sentinels, with their living armour and the swords that always return to the hand that wields them.
I didn't love this quite as much as City of Stairs: but that may just be because it's a darker book, or that the protagonist is less appealing to me than Shara Komayd was. Mulaghesh is haunted by her past -- we might diagnose PTSD -- and by the injury she sustained in the Battle of Bulikov. Voortya, the Divinity who was worshipped in Voortyashtan, is a Kali-esque figure, a warrior goddess (how apt for Mulaghesh) whose major innovation seems to have been the creation of an afterlife for her followers. And there are dark deeds afoot, and old feuds burning new, and a ritual that opens a way to Voortya's City of Blades.
But there are also -- as before -- strong female characters and intriguing world-building. I did begin to wonder, though, if the trilogy's arc is going to turn out to be focussed on Sigrud: I do find him fascinating, but I would hate to discover that Shara and Mulaghesh and Signe are peripheral to his story. And I'm not wholly convinced by Mulaghesh as a character -- or possibly as a female character. How different would the character be, would the novel be, if Mulaghesh were a man? ... I suspect these are captious and bloody-minded criticisms, and they may well stem from the slump after finishing City of Blades and realising I have to wait until May for the final volume of the trilogy.
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