I had the chance to interview Jim Butcher at New York Comic Con earlier this year, wherein he teases this book a bit. Go have a look: https://www.sffworld.com/2023/10/new-york-comic-con-2023-jim-butcher-interview/
When Jim Butcher launched his Epic Fantasy/Steampunk Saga The Cinder Spires in 2015, it was met with much excitement. We at SFFWorld loved it, as did many other readers. The wait has been long – 8 years – but here we are with the second book in the series, The Olympian Affair. Picking up shortly after the events of The Aeronaut’s Windlass, the world is on the brink of war, with the threat of Spire Aurora’s powerful fleet threatening other Spires.
For centuries the Cinder Spires have safeguarded humanity, rising far above the deadly surface world. Within their halls, aristocratic houses rule, developing scientific marvels and building fleets of airships for defense and trade.
Now, the Spires hover on the brink of open war.
Everyone knows it’s coming. The guns of the great airship fleets that control the skies between the last bastions of humanity will soon speak in anger, and Spire Albion stands alone against the overwhelming might of Spire Aurora’s Armada and its new secret weapon–one capable of destroying the populations of entire Spires.
A trading summit at Spire Olympia provides an opportunity for the Spirearch, Lord Albion, to secure alliances that will shape the outcomes of the war, and to that end he dispatches privateer Captain Francis Madison Grimm and the crew of the AMS Predator to bolster the Spirearch’s diplomatic agents.
It will take daring, skill, and no small amount of showmanship to convince the world to stand with Spire Albion–assuming that it is not already too late.
Returning in this second novel in the series are Captain Francis Madison Grimm, Gwendolyn Lancaster, Bridget Tagwynn, and of course the cat Rowl. We also see the story from the point of view of some new characters: Colonel Renaldo Espira and Duchess Abigail Hinton. In addition, we get a new cat named Fenli, who finds himself as a friendly antagonist to Rowl. The etherealists (i.e. steampunk wizards) Ferus and his apprentice Folly provide a different view into the magical workings of the world, both at how it works and makes things go, but also the dangers of using such vast quantities of power. Many of these characters come together at Spire Olympia (thus the title) in the hopes of preventing the armada of Spire Aurora from taking over the other spires.
When Jim Butcher goes epic, he goes very epic and there’s a lot to like in the scope of this novel as it opens up the world of the Cinder Spires. This novel is infused with so much fun, from the large cast of characters to the deeper look into this world’s long past. As with any story in the Epic Fantasy mold, characters are split up. Gwen and Grimm are on the airship Predator above the spires and at the trade conference at Aurora. Grimm’s best friend Commodore Bayard is sent from Albion as the delegate, but he unfortunately finds himself drawn into a duel with a Warriorborn – elite fighting men who have cat DNA blended with human DNA.
Meanwhile, Bridget and Rowl find themselves on a journey at the bases of the spires in search of a special Cat Clan in the hopes of securing their territory in the pending conflict. In the first novel, Butcher only mentioned the world at the base of the spires, but it was made out to be a savage, unsafe land. A landscape where monsters roam and death lay just around a corner. What we see through Bridget’s eyes is indeed a land with far from optimal living conditions, but somehow people (and Cats) survive. This despite kaiju like monsters roaming the landscape.
Those kaiju-sized creatures – which seem to make Godzilla small by comparison – make their way to the tops of the spires. Butcher does a wonderful job of infusing these scenes with sheer terror and awe creatures this enormous would elicit if they were real. These monstrous creatures have lived in the world for a very long time and Butcher reveals a bit more about the source of the magic and the ancient “Builders” who constructed the Spires, but far from all of its history. It is a tantalizing amount that hints at a long-dead, but advanced human society. Or maybe alien technology? What I appreciate at this point is that nothing is definitive, even though I – and probably most of the readers of these two Cinder Spires books – knows that Jim Butcher has all the answers.
It had been 8 years (and maybe 500 books) since I read The Aeronaut’s Windlass the first time, so I decided to re-read it in audio. My point is I don’t know how well The Olympian Affair would work if a reader had no knowledge of the first book. Reading them back-to-back made for great fun. Given the 8-year gap between books, it would have been a great move to include a “what came before” or “previously in The Cinder Spires” recap in The Olympian Affair. With the new release (and short novel Warriorborn), the publisher decided to “rebrand” the series with a new cover design/layout which I suppose I understand. They wanted to shift away from the cover that emulated the Dresden Files books and allow The Cinder Spires to stand on its own, which makes sense even if the cover art doesn’t much convey the book quite as well.
What does this all mean? I’m a little bit biased because I am a big fan of Jim Butcher’s work but I would say The Olympian Affair is a fine continuation of the series, a bombastic, epic novel that exudes fun. I found the narrative to slow in small spots, but overall, it was not an easy book for me to set aside. Its 600+ pages flipped through my hands quite quickly. I enjoyed the hell out of this novel and I am excited to see where the story goes next and to see more of the deep past of the world of the series.
Recommended
© 2023 Rob H. Bedford
Published by Ace Books | November 2023
Excerpt: https://www.tor.com/2023/11/03/excerpts-the-olympian-affair-by-jim-butcher/
https://www.jim-butcher.com/ | @LongshotAuthor | @JimButcherNews
Review copy courtesy of the publisher
