The world feels very familiar: literally stratified cities, magic that works to kill monsters, etc.. That doesn't mean that this isn't the start of an engaging book, just that there's a little weakness in the world building that my mind was easily able to fill in based on other books.

The big plus here was Clae and his complicated relationship with the police, the population and his family. Laura's desire to be a Sweeper doesn't diminish even when faced with Clae's reluctance to explain a lot of their work to her (the city having decided that the history of Sweepers isn't important enough to teach) and the danger they find themselves in almost daily. Adding Okemo to the mix was just wonderful. Of course, that lack of history and knowledge lend themselves to future books, where I suppose we'll learn more about the Magi and those caves, not to mention other cities.

eARC provided by publisher.

Clae Sinclair is the Head Sweeper of Amicae. Clae and his apprentice Laura take care of any infestations in their city. Amulets hold various magic. They can be used for everyday household things like cooking, or in jobs for speed, pretty much everything. But when an amulet gets broken, it becomes the possible host to an infestation. An infestation will destroy everything around it until it's stopped. That's where the sweepers come in. They make sure broken amulets are taken care of properly, and they fight any infestations that arise.

Somebody has it out for Clae. Would they really unleash multiple infestations on the city just to get back at one man? It looks that way.

This story was good, but not great. I thought the magic system sounded interesting, and I liked the characters. I doubt I will continue the series though. It just wasn't that memorable.

This book was a surprise to me. I was interested because I’d heard it described as being about magical bomb sweepers. What the heck does that even mean?? Turns out that is a pretty accurate description though.

Laura is a bomb “Sweeper” in training. She looks for amulets, objects that are imbued with magic that can suddenly turn foul, and erupt in destructive ways, ruining property and killing people. Her city has claimed to be free from all of these bad amulets, but in truth the devices are not only prolific but are also being used by unscrupulous individuals to manipulate and murder.

The book is not just a murder/mystery-gotta-catch-’em-all adventure story though. The action itself is spaced out through the book and not very concentrated. As a result, I have noticed that the book has widely varying reviews. This is one of those things you either latch on to or just isn’t for you. Luckily, this book is for me. To my mind it is a book about the far reaching effects of colonization and the subjugation of native people. This magic gone awry is part and parcel of the civilization’s past atrocities. Any colonizing civilization must reckon with the harm it has done sooner or later. This lends a substance to the book which I enjoyed but doesn’t weight it down.

I also really enjoyed the characters. Laura is still a bit of an enigma to me. She is a tough young woman for sure, and very driven. It’s an odd society where she is allowed a career but still expected to give it all up when she has a chance to marry a good man, which she has absolutely no intention of doing believe me! Her co-workers are complicated and the world of the Sweepers is interesting. The setting is a sort of Edwardian, turn of the century, sorta steam-punk world, which I always love. It gave me some Witchmark flavor, which was another book I loved this year.

I enjoyed this book and there is a cliff hanger that will make hanging on for the next volume a must. Here’s another author I put into my Netgalley auto search rotation! You have to love finding a new favorite!

Song for this book: While My Guitar Gently Weeps – Regina Spektor

Thanks to the publishers for sharing this title. I loved it and look forward to the next book in the series. My full review appears on Weekend Notes.

I went back and forth several times with this book thinking I was going to give it three stars, then four, then three, no four... and again and again, ha ha. However, in the end I enjoyed more of the story than not and in a couple of places it was a solid page turner. I was invested in all the characters. The premise and many of the story elements were quite unique, for me anyway, and the magical system was fresh, too.

One of my problems, which has nothing to do with the book, is wondering why the publisher felt they needed to make the Goodreads and Netgalley summaries complete fabrications. A lot of bloggers, myself included, requested the book based on the summary and were a bit miffed when we started reading and the storyline wasn't near as exciting as it was made to seem.

The magical system was on the complicated side, and I think in a few instances it could have been better explained. I didn't find any holes in it, as such, but some items had too many alternate names and forms; and it wasn't necessary. Also, the term "monster" was used for too many different things. The world building was pretty solid, and I am a stickler about both of these things. I liked that the story mirrored some of the socio-political and socio-economic goings on in our own world today.

What it all boils down to is that it was good storytelling and I enjoyed reading it; and I am looking forward to reading the next book.

DNF at 25%
This book was boring. The main character was... bland. She didn't have anything interesting about her. Sometimes a normal protagonist can be good, but this one is too normal. The other main character was supposed to be all gruff and grumpy, and he was a little more interesting, but there wasn't anything else to go on. It was like a slightly less-boring co-worker that you still don't talk to.
The worldbuilding was confusing. It's like the author was trying to avoid info dumps, but went too far and gave us way too little information. Are there even mobs? What is with these amulets? Why is everyone in this city a giant idiot? Why do we care? The magic system is vague and confusing. The world itself is boring. The monsters don't add enough interest to the world.
Also, the job of killing monsters which sounds exciting, is actually pretty dull. They're called Sweepers and they make fighting monsters exactly like doing household chores. It's routine. It's boring. It's like reading the daily log of a bored police officer. Just telling off drunks, driving in circles, and occasionally giving out a speeding ticket every day. Not something I want to read.
I just couldn't care about what was going to happen next.

<a href="https://booksofmyheart.net/2018/12/06/city-of-broken-magic-by-mirah-bolender/" target="_blank">This review was originally posted on Books of My Heart</a>

3.5 hearts

Review copy was received from NetGalley. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

I just love books with magic.  I saw this and the blurb sounded great so I was excited to get <strong>City of Broken Magic. </strong> I wish I had re-read the blurb again before I read the book and some things might have made more sense but others would have made less, so..   Yes, I had some of that first book .. I don't get the world .. I don't know the characters yet.

Laura is the main character and we see the world through her. She is a new adult, just out of school. She is very young but capable. I liked her and found she had realistic feelings.  We all want to sleep in sometimes or don't like parts of our job, or wonder how we are doing.

As far as the work itself and the broken magic, I was more frustrated by lack of understanding and action. It didn't really get going until almost half-way through.  Then, it was life-and-death crazy, and I was in fear for the characters I now like. The action was harrowing and fast-paced.

Now I know the main characters, although there are some supporting ones to be more developed, perhaps. The basic facts are clear. But what the hell are they going to do now?  I'm totally ready for more in the <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/series/248437-chronicles-of-amicae" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><em><strong>Chronicles of Amicae series</strong></em></a>.

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Laura is the apprentice to head sweeper Clae, with them being the only sweepers in their city. Their job is to kill evil infestations that terrorize the inhabitants of the city while the government claims that no infestations can touch the city and they are all perfectly safe. The city is circular in design, with the most wealthy and highest social classes living in sector 1, then center. The poorest and most plentiful live in the outer most loop, allowing them to be most vulnerable to infestations from outside the city.

While this book sounded right up my alley on reading the description, I found it difficult to get into. The two characters that you are first introduced to are Clae and Laura. Clae is distant and unfriendly. Laura is naive and uneducated in her line of work. Neither are particularly gripping characters that invite you along for their journey. The writing style was fine, but again, not gripping enough for me to keep reading. The story was a bit hard to follow in the beginning and made the book easily put down.

Unfortunately, this is going on my Did Not Finish shelf, as I REALLY tried, but just could not get into the story or the characters.

I did not know about the novel, but after reading the synopsis, it’s true that I was intrigued! Well, I must say that already, with the mention of magic, I knew that I was going to want to discover the story!

Laura is a sweeper, well an apprentice sweeper and she works with her boss to eliminate magical infestations and it’s really not easy! On top of that, she must also face the morals of people who think that a woman like her should not work in this area. Is not it better to be a switchboard operator or even a housewife? But our heroine does not hear it that way and she is determined to become the best one (not that there are many by the way).

I found the idea of ​​the novel very nice, but I must admit that I struggled to get into history because I found that the universe was very confusing. We are propelled into it without understanding what is happening and it is true that this aspect was a little complicated. Other than that, I had a good time with the three characters and I was curious to see how the story was going to end.

I gave it 2.5 stars

CITY OF BROKEN MAGIC was.....confusing.

I was pretty excited about CITY OF BROKEN MAGIC when I read the blurb, but I just couldn't get into the story. I hate to say it, but I skimmed a lot of the book after the first half. The world was actually pretty neat, I just couldn't stay in the zone and got bored while reading.

I actually really liked the characters. Clae was brusque, but interesting. I hated how things ended with him. Laura was strongly built and I liked her right off the bat. The side characters were also easy to like.

I'm not really sure where CITY OF BROKEN MAGIC went wrong. There was a lot of information given and I think I just got lost in all of it. I also didn't feel like the plot was strong enough to carry everything through to the end.

I won't read more from this series, but I didn't totally hate what I read.

* This book was provided free of charge from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Unfortunately this book was a let down for me despite several attempts to read it I couldn't finish it and ending up putting it down at about 5% completion.

The storyline drew me in and sounded amazing and I'm usually a pretty huge Tor fan girl so I guess my expectations were pretty high and I was just disappointed it didn't meet my expectations which is no fault of the authors.

I actually LOVED the introductory chapter and flew through that. It was dark, descriptive and different. Everything I love in a book. The writing was fast paced but imagistic and created a creepy, mysterious atmosphere. It was when the point of view changed that I couldn't keep reading.

The atmosphere disappeared and it almost did a total 360. Everything felt very black and white and bland. I ended up putting it down at 5% completion because it just wasn't what I was expecting and I lost interest completely.

The description of this book described it as being about a bomb squad that defuses magic weapons. How awesome does that sound? So much urban fantasy focuses on private-eye or police-style characters dealing with murders or disappearances. A magical bomb squad sounded like a nice change of pace.

And City of Broken was a change of pace. Just not a good one.

Debut author Mirah Bolender has clearly put a lot of work into her setting and magic system — you can tell, because she loves to go off on random bits of exposition about the city or the magic or the history. At times, this is endearing, you can really sense the eagerness of the author to share her creation with the world. But at other times, the book would have been much approved by a show versus tell approach. One memorable unnecessary detour into the denominations of money used in the city especially stood out to me.

But my biggest complaint about this book is that the main character Laura was, to me, completely unlikeable.

Now here’s the thing. When I call a character “unlikeable”, I don’t mean that I feel like I would dislike them if they were a real person I met in the real world. I mean that I utterly and completely disliked reading about them. I can enjoy books about people I would want nothing to do with in real life. The author just has to make them compelling. I found Laura the opposite of compelling — I found her repellent.

Why? Because it honestly felt to me like Laura didn’t like anything. She has her dream job, and all she does is complain about it and her boss. She doesn’t have any friends. She resents the aunt who has mostly raised her. She seems to find everything either boring or annoying. She struck me very much as the sort of New Adult protagonist who has a lot of growing to do, and maybe the author is setting up a story arc where she grows over the course of a series, but she didn’t grow enough in this first book for me to be willing to give her another chance.

For me, the biggest sticking point was how Laura treats a secondary character. At the start of the book, Laura is the only apprentice to her teacher Clae. They are “Sweepers”, the aforementioned magical bomb squad. All of Clae’s previous colleagues and past apprentices have died. The two of them are the only Sweepers in the city of Amicae, though other cities have more. Through the events of the book, Clae gets a second apprentice Okane. Clae and Laura rescue Okane from a rich family who had enslaved and abused him. Okane is quiet and unassuming, and Laura is utterly and completely jealous of him because he’s convinced she’s going to take her position. There’s no reason for her to think this, because there’s no rule saying that Clae can only have one apprentice or that only one person can succeed him, and Okane shows less aptitude for the job than Laura. Her apparent lack of sympathy for Okane’s difficult pass and her petty attitude towards him just felt incredibly immature. It would have been one thing if it had felt like they were mutually vying to be Clae’s favorite apprentice, but instead it felt like Okane was trying to adjust to a sudden change in lifestyle and a new job that he had some misgivings about, and Laura was just needlessly paranoid that he was going to usurp her.

There were lots of other things that stood out to me, in terms of inconsistent world building and a magic system that seemed really bizarre. Honestly, the whole thing struck me as feeling more like a self-published or small press book rather than something from Tor Books.

I suspect some readers will find this book works for them. The setting has an interesting feeling, a sort of urban semi-steampunk situation in a land full of city-states. The author has set up a world with a lot of room to grow and explore. I just don’t trust her to create characters that I actually want to read about.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with an advanced reader copy in return for my (perhaps brutally honest) opinion.

In this novel, dark magic is on the rise. In the form of infestations growing out of broken amulets, they kill without a thought and it takes a lot of skill to get rid of them. Laura is one of the few people who try to do this in the city of Amicae. She is new, her boss is kind of rude and she isn't taken as seriously as she should be.

This story is interesting. That's the best way I can combine my conflicting feelings about this book in one sentence. My most accurate rating would be 3.5 because there's a lot I like but also a lot I wish could have been... more.

Laura, her boss Clae and her new colleague Okane are fascinating and complex people but I didn't feel connected to them until the end of the story.
The plot is interesting and quite original but I felt like it could have been even more original and some twists didn't feel that twisty at all and more like they were the only option left (but ohhh I love family drama!).
The world this novel is set in is unique and I would love to see more stories about it, the author certainly carefully crafted this beautiful but dark place with myths and a long history but I felt like the exposition was done rather clumsily at some points and I just don't enjoy info-dumps for a whole page.

The lack of romance and focus on lower class people and magic in very different ways than I usually see were really refreshing and I'd love to see more of that.

Still, I feel like this story has a lot of potentials and while I hoped for something more I do think a sequel could provide just that. The story can go some interesting ways and honestly, the last 50 pages or so of the book were really good so I certainly hope for more of that.

My Rating : 2.75🌟

An infestation that can eat magic. Sweepers(Non-magic humans) who die before they finish their training to kill the infestations. And now the last set of sweepers stand between the city and a massive infestation that threatens the whole city.
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First of all, I love the concept of how the world was set. It definitely paved way to the ending smoothly. Second, I loved the character Clay! He is the only character I ended up loving in the whole book. Amazing mixture of sarcasm, sass, authority yet has a soft spot deep down.
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I read the blurb of the story and imagined Laura would be only one alive to fight all the infestations, and kept looking forward to the death of all the others sweepers. Second, the world building was in such a way that you get confused after a point of time as to why certain things are happening. I would say the major let down for me was the repetitive scenes with how the infestations work. For almost 70% of the book Laura was just as clueless as you are, and acts as a shadow behind Clay ( The head Guy). And then suddenly she is the only one left to save the city with just 20% left in the book.
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I would have liked to have some more build up to the ending. It happened s fast that you don’t get to understand what is happening unless you read very slow. I felt that few scenes could have been a lot less detailed to pave way for a good path to the ending. If you are a fan of magic systems, complicated characters, good friendship and a good ending , try this book.

This was interesting and still could be a good series. I was surprised by the death and there are still mysteries to solve. That was part of the problem. Mysteries last for too long and don't feel solved at all. I constantly felt like I only had half the information needed. The book jumped around without notice from paragraph to paragraph. Several times I went back a page or two to see it it was my mistake. I don't know it that was a problem with the eARC or not.

So the city of Amicae is built with a Minas Tirith-like tier system and exists in a world that seems an awful lot like Studio Ghibli’s Howl’s Moving Castle, complete with blob-slime-monsters called “infestations” that happen if you don’t keep your amulet plugged in or…something. I’m not 100% certain how the whole magic-infestation-system works here, but, to be fair, neither do any of the characters, so there’s that.

Anyway, it’s hard to pinpoint the time period Amicae is supposed to be reminiscent of - the city has trolleys, phones, radios, but is also very down with enforcing traditional gender roles for men and women. Also, there’s the foxtrot, a dance that came about in the 1910s, so…anyway I just started imagining Amicae as being if Studio Ghibli made Howl’s Moving Castle but with Minas Tirith.

Anyway. So, our heroine, Laura Kramer, is a “sweeper” in Amicae: a person who deals with infestations of these magical blob Studio Ghibli monsters. Laura is one of only two sweepers in the whole of Amicae - it’s just her, and her prickliest of the prickly pears, Clae Sinclair. Clae (pronounced Cly, and not Clay like I assumed for the first 20 or so pages) was once part of a whole family of sweepers - only, being a sweeper is a dangerous job, most of Clae’s apprentices have been killed on the job, and the higher-ups of Amicae are so desperate to avoid acknowledging the magic-blob-monster infestations that they’ve provided the sweeper department with almost no support. As a result, the sweepers have dwindled to literally just Clae and Laura. While dealing with a magical infestation at the mansion of a rich douchebag, Clae liberates one of the household servants, Okane, who, as it turns out, is a magi - no, he didn’t sell his watch to get a comb for his wife and his wife didn’t sell her hair to get him a watch chain, coordinate your Christmas gift-giving, people - a magi is someone who has more magic to them than normal people. Magi have, of course, been treated like shit throughout history, so most of them hide who they are, and sometimes rich douchebags will keep them in their houses as slaves, because they’re rich douchebags.

Anyway, Okane has the ability to sense infestations, but so far as sweeper training goes, he’s really, really bad at it.

So while Amicae is hell-bent on avoiding the infestation problem, Clae has been fighting to get more recognition for his department, Laura is stuck between societal expectations from her as a woman vs what Clae says is a natural talent for sweeping, and Okane is slowly but surely overcoming a lifetime of enslavement and abuse to become a somewhat adequate sweeper.

But while all this is going down, there’s a massive infestation taking root in Amicae. Like, supermassive. Like, No-Face from Spirited Away after he ate all that food levels of massive. So massive that it could destroy the whole city and kill everyone in it.

And the only people left to deal with it are Clae, Laura and Okane.

I struggled with City of Broken Magic - I really liked the characters, especially prickly-pear Clae, but the worldbuilding seemed a bit shaky - as City is first in an intended series, we may have more to learn about the world around it, but much of this first book felt like the world was being built as the story was written. I could get over that, though, because I wanted to know more about Laura, Okane and Clae. To add more to the Ghibli-esque feel of the story, there are a lot of Japanese-inspired terms for the monsters. Okane’s name is mentioned, in-story, to mean “money” - which is does in Japanese (お金 , it’s considered the more polite form for “money” - for someone who spent four years learning Japanese, I’ve retained…uh…practically none of it).

So, to make a long story short: I really liked the characters. I want to know what happens to them. I can ignore some of the glitches in worldbuilding because I actually do want to know what will happen next to the Amicae Sweepers.

City of Broken Magic, by Mirah Bolender, is a refreshingly original fantasy novel which follows Laura as she pursues her dreams of becoming a ‘Sweeper’. The art of using magic to defeat monsters is a dangerous and dying profession, but one that’s about to become extremely important again.

Amicae is a city of delusions. ‘There are no monsters in the city.’ ‘The people are safe.’ ‘The danger is out there in the wilds, infestations can’t pass through the city walls.’

The city’s Council goes to great lengths to defend their lies. ‘Sweepers’ are forbidden to reveal details of their work. The Council maintains the false story that infestations are simply used as weapons in criminal mob attacks. They’re not something that ordinary people need to worry about.

But the infestations are becoming more common, and harder to hide.

Clae is the only Sweeper left in Amicae. He, along with his new apprentice, Laura, is all that stands between Amicae and total destruction by monsters.

The world that Bolender has created is fascinating. The magic system is so very detailed, with complex hidden structures all over Amicae supporting the protective elements and intricate details about how it all fits together and interacts with the monsters.

The world building is neatly done. In the opening scene Laura and Clae battle an infestation. It’s simultaneously exciting and thoroughly confusing. The reader is simply dropped into the world and left to figure it out little bit by little bit.

By about halfway through when we’re battling another major infestation I felt thoroughly immersed and like I completely understood what was going on.

This book started off strong with a (sadly, one time only) point of view of a monster (a blobby mass of malevolence who reminded me a bit of Hexxus from the movie Ferngully) being born and seeking out some food.

It was a great introduction to a book with a strong, original premise about a world where Sweepers do the work of monster removal in a society that doesn't believe the monsters exist anymore, and consequently has no appreciation for the danger Sweepers put themselves in.

I read a review of this book that said while the reviewer loved the world in this book, they didn't always love the world building. I'd have to agree with that assessment. The action scenes in this book are great, but they are balanced out with perhaps too much exposition and world building.

Like most epic fantasies (and first books in a planned series), there is a lot to unpack here. As a faithful reader, I carefully inventory all of that unpacking to seek clues to things that will come later in the book. Some clues (like a lengthy descriptions of the pits and why they're maintained or Clae referring to "Anselm," pay off later in the book) while others (all of the mob business) didn't, or maybe just didn't in this particular book. In other cases the world building just had some odd holes in it (like why would you frequently take your apprentice to a giant tree and never explain to her its pivotal role in protecting the city?) It all felt a little disjointed.

Thankfully though, the world building is balanced out by strong characters. (Although I would have liked to see more development on Akane). Laura is a likeable character. Her family drama isn't fleshed out much but we learn a lot about gender inequality in this world she lives in and her need to feel like she is a valued member of society. (I have no idea why the promotional materials for this book said Laura is the last Sweeper. That is true for exactly ZERO PERCENT of the book, and keeps you waiting for a big death scene every time she and Clae do battle.) Clae is an even more intriguing character. I enjoyed the section where he and Laura journeyed to another city to visit other Sweepers and unpack some history.

Overall, I dug this book a lot. Just not sure I'd necessarily seek out a sequel. The ending sees our heroes receiving a key, but I'm not terribly invested in learning what that key will unlock. On the other hand, perhaps with some of the introductory exposition now out of the way, this author would be more free in a second book to let these characters run free and play. That might be a book worth seeking out.

Thanks to the author and NetGalley for granting me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

I really am not that great at predicting which books I will adore. I was so sure I would love this because at the surface it does so many things I appreciate in books; but I also found its pace fairly slow and, more importantly, some of the narrative decisions when it came to the characters unfortunate.

Set in a partly industrialized fantasy setting (something I happen to really enjoy), this story follows Laura, newly employed Sweeper working for what is basically a bomb-squad but for monsters (awesome, right?). The world and the premise are brilliant – but the way this story is told might have worked better in a different medium – I would love this as a video game for example. Laura and her boss have to banish different monsters, always trying to find new ways to do so. These scenes, while exhilerating in the beginning, did start to feel a bit stale fairly soon. When the newest team member arrives, the story lost steam for me even more. I found Laura’s reaction to him deeply troubling in its lack of empathy and also not quite fitting for her character who before has not displayed this much selfishness.

I did really love the world but did not always appreciate the world building itself. There were many super interesting ideas floating around but they never felt organically integrated into the story. Ultimately the world building happened mostly through info-dumping and slowed down the pacing even more.

While I in theory appreciate the commentary on women’s roles in this society, I found its discussion in the text fairly obvious and not all that original. Laura is quick to assume everybody’s reaction to her is down to them being sexist and while that may well be the case the reader was never shown the way sexism is integral to the society but is rather told so. One major problem I had in this context was that while we were told that women were only allowed certain jobs, we were shown many women in powerful positions without anybody reacting to that at all, indicating that this is in fact normal for the society. This made Laura seem particularly thin-skinned and her reaction often overblown.

I loved the idea of this book. It sounded different and interesting, but was sadly disappointing for me. I’m still in love with the ideas of sweepers and magic going wrong, and having to clean it up. I even loved Clae as a character.

But unfortunately, the presentation just didn’t quite cut it for me. Just when I would start getting into the story, and really want to know what was happening, I would be ambushed with a massive info-dump, usually in forced dialogue. The worst part is that I’m still a little confused about some of the world-building. Perhaps it was because I tend to skim info-dumps, but mostly I couldn’t seem to get grounded in the world. It was like I was groping for a time-period or something familiar to grab onto and would only get glimpses of things. Which I’m fine with, but I then need to be supplied with the necessary information to figure it out (which for me, is quite little information usually). I guess it just didn’t feel like the world-building was coherent at all, like it was a list of facts the author created, but didn’t weave into the world.

The other thing that was a huge issue for me was the pacing - it was described as fast-paced and it’s not. Rather it’s somewhat episodic with big breaks to explore world-building and lore among various other things. Which is fine, but not what I was expecting and I definitely found myself getting frustrated with it. And I feel obligated to mention that the blurb that was attached to the book didn’t represent it well, and actually contained a spoiler, which minorly ruined the book for me.

Anyway, moving onto things I enjoyed. First off, I loved Clae. Great character with an interesting back story. Couldn’t help but adore him. Probably cause I’m also a surly, salt-factory of a person. And second, I thought the fight scenes were bang-on. The use of technology and the creative way that they work things at the climax (I won’t say more cause spoilers), loved it all, and the action definitely reads excellently.

Anyway, this book really wasn’t for me. But I would suggest giving it a try if you’re okay with info-dumps (I know some people like them!), are generally a fan of urban fantasy/steampunk, and don’t mind a bit of a slow-build.

2.5 stars rounded up to 3