readerjane (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
readerjane) wrote2019-04-27 08:03 am
readerjane) wrote2019-04-27 08:03 am
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What I'm reading
This week I finished City of Stairs, the first in Robert Jackson Bennett's The Divine Cities series.
There's a lot going on in this story. The flip/flop of colonialism: a not!Europe that once oppressed not!India and is now being oppressed by its former colony. Gods who act in the world, but who can be killed, whose miracles disappear with them. A woman from a progressive culture, doing her undercover/diplomatic/investigatory job in the midst of a traditionalist culture.
What impressed me most (and I had to look back at the title page to verify the author was really a dude) was that the authority figures were female. Mayors, generals, ambassadors -- there are men with agency here, but most of the movers and shakers are women.
Also, the climactic fight against a kraken set on and under an ice-covered river absolutely rocked.
Looking forward to book 2.
There's a lot going on in this story. The flip/flop of colonialism: a not!Europe that once oppressed not!India and is now being oppressed by its former colony. Gods who act in the world, but who can be killed, whose miracles disappear with them. A woman from a progressive culture, doing her undercover/diplomatic/investigatory job in the midst of a traditionalist culture.
What impressed me most (and I had to look back at the title page to verify the author was really a dude) was that the authority figures were female. Mayors, generals, ambassadors -- there are men with agency here, but most of the movers and shakers are women.
Also, the climactic fight against a kraken set on and under an ice-covered river absolutely rocked.
Looking forward to book 2.