City of Storms by Kat RossMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
The story jumps right into the action … with the MC (Fra Alexei Bryce) responding to the alarm raised by the “Markhounds" of an individual “turning” to madness. It was a solid start; although the rapid fire delivery of new language/terms make it slow reading initially because of the lack of preceding context … it is worth pushing through. Some familiarity with Latin and the Catholic Church would probably help as the world building appears to borrow fairly heavily from each.
“There is no God in the Via Sancta” where everything is beautiful and virtuous. Even so, there are enough clever adaptations to make it interesting … instead of the Inquisition chasing down heretics, you have the “Interfectorum” chasing down people for whom the magic marks has gone bad (inverted/turned). These ideas are woven into a magic system based on psyche, ley lines, marks/tattoos, wards, cartomancy, and nihilism that appears to be well researched and implemented … and interesting.
Even with the fantastic world-building, I would regard this story as character driven. The two main characters include a war weary cleric using the Interfectorum for his own purposes teaming up with an “amoral” character from the other side of the tracks (one of the "unmarked”) to unravel a conspiracy that would be right at home in a Dan Brown novel. The twists and turns were exciting where even the supporting characters were interesting and nuanced. While it was not quite top shelf … I really, really liked it … so I am rounding up :-)
I was given this free advance reader copy (ARC) ebook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.
No comments:
Post a Comment