City of Stairs

I needed something to read on my kindle, and sometimes I feel as though I've exhausted much of the fantasy genre. I am obviously mistaken. I was looking through goodreads and found this mentioned as a good or great book, depending on which review you looked at it. I decided to give it a try.

Title: City of Stairs
Author: Robert Bennett Jackson
Format: Kindle

The story takes place in Bukilov, the capital city of "the Continent." The Continent had conquered much of the world because they had Gods or "Divinities" aiding them. Then a man emerge from Saypur, a small conquered and oppressed island, and killed the gods, helping Saypur replace the Continent as the dominant world power. Our story takes place four generations later in modern Bukilov. A prominent Saypuri historian is murdered and a representative from the foreign ministry, Shara, arrives to investigate the crime. Within days she finds herself barely avoiding assault and potentially talking to gods. All is not as it seems in Bukilov and Shara's curiosity leaves her no choice but to unravel all the twisted threads.

I think the simplest, but most important thing I can say about this book is that the story is much better than the writing. There was a slow start, but the story became more and more engaging and the style less distracting as each page turned. When I say that story isn't particularly well written, I'm referring to a few specific things. Firstly, the story takes place in third person present, with us inside the head of whoever is the main focus of each section (mainly Shara). This is an odd and off putting choice, but the reader gets used to it after a hundred pages or so. The second problem is a pet peeve of mine. Jackson's method of writing dialogue is incredibly frustrating. He puts more than two separate lines of dialogue in one paragraph. This drives me crazy. It's cluttered, confusing, and amateurish and I hate when authors do this. Even worse, at points he has multiple people talking within the same paragraph. Could he not find the enter key while he was writing the manuscript?

The plot itself is enthralling. To potential readers, ignore the first chapter, it's by far the section of the entire book, and while it sets up the plot for the rest of the novel, it's a boring chapter about bored characters doing boring thing. Just get through it. On the plus side, in the rest of the book there are gods, demons, intrigue, death, sex, and good old fashion monster fighting. Jackson gets a little bit of everything into the story, and does so in a surprisingly coherent and entertaining way. I would recommend this book to most fantasy fans, but I'd warn them that parts of the book can be quite a struggle. I don't think I'll be exploring the rest of the series. Good luck.
6/10