Nicole's Reviews > City of Stairs

City of Stairs is not your usual fantasy. It is set in a relatively modern world (in comparison to the usual high fantasy) where we have cars, photography, and telegrams. I wouldn't say it's cyberpunk exactly, I'm not a big fan of this genre, for technology was not an important aspect in this book.

The best thing about City of Stairs is the world-building. I am not hard to please when it comes to world-building, I only want some question answered, I don’t want to be confused, and that’s basically it. The world Bennett weaved is nothing short of amazing for 450 pages. I am rarely intrigued by the history of a world and it definitely helped that our MC is a history grad.

The events of the book mostly take place in the Continental city of Bulikov, a city previously considered the center of the world. Six divinities govern the Continent, their worshipers benefit from so many luxuries (they basically have no use for technologies), however, they have colonized Saypur for so long and its citizens were treated very poorly. After centuries of oppression, the Saypuri Kaj manages to kill the Gods in Belikov and now, Saypur has flourished and thriven while the continentals are living in very degrading conditions. Our MC, Shara, came to Belikov to investigating the murder of a former historian colleague, she’s an intelligence employee of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. What starts as a murder investigation becomes a mission to unravel some very dangerous secrets of the world.

The other strong aspect of this book was the story itself. And here’s why. I could not connect to the characters (so I won’t bother to talk about each of them). They were all… meh. Many of my friends on GR praised the characters, however, they were the reason why I struggled with this book. I’m more of a character person, as long as they are engaging and I can connect with them, the rest is secondary (of course, to an extent). Anyhow, if the story wasn’t good, I would’ve dnf this book. Even at the end, I couldn’t connect with them. It might be due to age difference but I honestly doubt it. I admired Shara’s intelligence but I couldn’t develop any feelings towards her, even though she is the protagonist. Another point I need to mention is how Shara talked about some things that were supposed to be “top secret” casually in front of Pitry (a secondary character) and Mulaghesh did not even blink. This honestly didn’t make any sense to me, regardless if Pitry is going to do anything about this info, they talked about them casually as if he already knows (it wasn’t even mentioned that he was surprised and I’m sure this is new knowledge to him).

Nonetheless, I have enjoyed this book enough to give it solid 4 stars especially since the last 40% was very addicting, many plot twists and revelations, most I did not see coming. So this book was overall a pleasant surprise. I do not think I will continue with this series, however. Mulaghesh did not mean anything to me and even though I want to know what will happen in the future, this book offered somewhat of a satisfying conclusion.