Posted by The opening scene plops the reader into the middle of a sacking of a city, we learn later on that this it the overthrow of the governing class of nobles and the birth of a new era with the merchant class coming out on top. There are a lot of beheadings, lol. The prologue character has been tasked to get a woman and her child out of the burning city before they’re killed, then bring them back to the Sky Marshall. He doesn’t know why these two people are of importance, but he figures if the task important enough for the Marshall to send him out, that’s all he need to know. The opening scene has like… I don’t know, a dozen or so deaths? People getting stabbed. People getting their throats cut. People getting shot through the head. So, it sets up the tone and setting to be a steampunk/gunpowder action book and I was down for it.
We then skip to Meryl many years later. She’s a thief who has a tiny skyship, if you can even call it that, named The Raven. It’s a single person craft that’s meant for stealth, which is perfect given her occupation as a rooftop thief. It’s also important for her never to be discovered because that ship is super illegal. She can only fly on the darkest moonless nights, which is an exercise in willpower for her since her biggest love in life is flight. There are big sky ships, little sky ships, medium sky ships, merchant ships that are fancy — there’s lots of ships in this. Meryl is only 16 years old but because she’s had a hard life she’s much more mature than her age would suggest. If I wasn’t told her age I would have pegged her as early 20s, not a teenager. This does get a little weird for me since her girlfriend works in her mother’s brothel and it’s just a little awkward for me to read about a teen and her partner in that kind of setting. The way she interacted with her kind of girlfriend felt much more mature, too. It’s hard to describe but her confidence and the way they interact just felt much more adult than teen. So much so I kept forgetting she was a teenager until it was brought up in text how young she was. She still does shit that a teenager would do, though. Like, I don’t know, impulsively stealing a world famous piece of jewelry because it was laying around and she’s a thief and that’s just the way of the universe. Nevermind that it’s impossible to sell because no one will touch it. She has a mentor known as Tinker who loses his mind when she pulls off this bullshit and she later learns just how right he was.
There’s also a 15 year old character who at first just called The Acolyte. She’s a healer being held like a prisoner in a tower, living on a floor utterly to herself with guards outside her door. She’s not even allowed access to the windows because someone may see her inside. So, her main source of light is candles and not the sun. She’s an utter shut-in recluse, and it’s because of her powers. She’s extremely lonely and I can’t believe she’s not insane being so sequestered. She’s something known as a Whisper, someone who can use magic, and if the word got out she could be hauled off to jail or worse. It’s the very church tat condemns magic that’s training her to use the magic for their purposes. Shocking. Abuse of power is so rare, you know? Although about the same age as Meryl she’s lived an utterly opposing lifestyle and instead of being overly exposed to life and it’s hardships she’s been underexposed and is very innocent and naïve, making her feel younger than she actually is at times. The Acolyte was stripped of her name when she joined to become a cleric, but Meryl thinks this is awful, and so when they meet (I’ll let you guys RAFO how they meet since she’s locked in a tower) Meryl gives her the name Alys.
Michel is an inspector on the docks. I was relieved to get an older character because I tend to relate to them more but I ended up not relating to this guy much at all, lol. He’s kind of fucked up his life. He’s been sent to shitty district to be a police officer, an area that no one wants to find themselves in. His wife left him years ago and he hasn’t remarried and I don’t recall any current steady girlfriend, he just visits the brothels and forgets the girls’ names. He’s got no family, no friends, and he’s basically just existing from one drink to the next. So, he’s been tasked with figuring out who stole the necklace. We the reader know it’s Meryl but Michel has to get there on his own.
This whole book took place mostly in the city know as Pelz. It’s a cool as fuck setting and it was very built up in my mind’s eye — which is not a common phenomena for me so well done there. I felt like I could see the city and I also understood the city’s relationship with the rest of the world which is hugely helpful to an immersive experience. It’s a seaside city that’s thriving after the overthrow of the aristocrat class (which was our opening scene). The merchants have taken over after beheading a lot of the nobles and trade is in full force leading to a ton of ships, air or sea, surrounding this seaside cliff city. It’s really cool. I really enjoyed the world building, for the most part it wasn’t told to me but shown to me which is my preference. There was a little exposition here and there but nothing that stood out as really awkward or force fed.
The writing is definitely a little more old school and not super modern, which isn’t really my preference, but that’s a personal taste thing. Something else that became an issue for me were Big Words being thrown in there when ‘normal words’ would do just fine. The word ‘masticate’ always makes me giggle, and it always takes me out of the moment. Can’t say why, it just does. There were just a lot of bigger words used that kind of stand out from the rest of the text and they just kind of jar me out of the scene. It wasn’t common enough for me to DNF or get really frustrated, but they were sprinkled in enough for me to notice.
The pacing was a little wonky for me because there was such an uneven amount of time spent between characters. At first, I thought there was going to be an even split between the page times of Michel, Alys, and Meryl, but it’s really Meryl and Michel most of the time with little bits of Alys sprinkled in here and there. Sometimes I forget she exists despite liking her character. This is also a really long book in general. It’s clocked at 614 pages putting it roughly around 153,000 words. I do think some of this could have been cut or trimmed down to make this a little more streamlined and “to the point” because it did wander a little bit and I wondered at the relevance of certain scenes, or the length of scenes. I was actually getting a little angry at it too because the prologue character didn’t seem to have relevance for a long time and it was messing with the pacing because I was getting antsy to see if the prologue was going to have any relevance at all to the rest of the story. Thank god the prologue did actually have a point or I may have DNF’ed, lol. It comes back around and becomes relevant about halfway through the book. I would also say that from 50% onward is much faster paced than the first half of the book which helped me a lot.
Overall though, despite my nitpicks a personal preferences, I read this one through to the end and enjoyed myself with it. It’s a neat steampunk book with a robust cast of characters that really stood out from one another and had their own Voices. I’d recommend this to someone looking for a flintlock/gunpowder fantasy with airships!
Since I completed this book it is marked as SAFE at the time of this review.