
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The second book in the Tyrant Philosophers Series
Previous Review of City of Last Chances
Although this is the second of the series, it can easily stand alone; however, given the rich and detailed world-building on top of what we find in the first book, I would still recommend reading them in order. In addition, there are a couple of characters carried over … a former priest of God and God himself, a grouchy healing deity who constantly berates his former priest … who, having [partially] abrogated his religous vows, is suddenly is able to see all gods. This prompts him to try and smuggle what is left of them away from the Palleseen Sway and its army of logic and reason that is fighting to suppress all superstition and piety in its pursuit of perfection … only the be captured and pressed into service as a foreign auxiliary in an experimental field hospital for the Palleseen army. The nod to the TV show MASH is so obvious this comparison can be found in nearly every review for this book. Apparently the inexorable of reason and perfection was able to pause, at least momentarily, to the practicality of results from a misfit collection of divine healing, necromantic arts, demonic sorcerers, petty grifters … until “Maric Jack” bring his coterie of fading deities that he was trying to smuggle out and completely disrupts the “orderly” conduct of the army with his unpredictable healing god who demands complete pacificity from those graced with his healing power … something that is anathema to a soldier’s lot in life.
Okay … so … like the previous book, the dystopian world-building is some of the best that I have ever encountered and feels so real that you can easily place yourself in the story … which is fortunately, because the buildup is sooooo slooooow that the only thing that kept me coming back to pickup the book again and again for the first half of the story was this and the incredibly beautify prose (I really enjoy how Tchaikovsky plays with language here). There is just not a lot of action and the cast of characters were hard for me to like much … I didn’t hate them, but they just didn’t have anything I could easily identify with. It picks up nicely on the back nine though and I was able to push through that in just a few sittings and was able to better appreciate the long buildup (it was worth it) and I thought that the ending absolutely fantastic.
I was given this free advance reader copy (ARC) ebook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.
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