Robert Jackson Bennett is a writer whose output isn’t easy to classify, aside from brilliant storytelling, wonderful characters and some element of fantastic or macabre. Each of his novels is not quite like the previous he’s written and published, but there is a distinct voice common across those novels (at least the three I’ve read). He writes powerful, evocative stories that push all the right buttons for me as a reader regardless of setting or characters, which brings us to City of Stairs. Here’s the publisher description, since my review will be slightly all over the map…
The city of Bulikov once wielded the powers of the gods to conquer the world, enslaving and brutalizing millions—until its divine protectors were killed. Now Bulikov has become just another colonial outpost of the world’s new geopolitical power, but the surreal landscape of the city itself—first shaped, now shattered, by the thousands of miracles its guardians once worked upon it—stands as a constant, haunting reminder of its former supremacy.
Into this broken city steps Shara Thivani. Officially, the unassuming young woman is just another junior diplomat sent by Bulikov’s oppressors. Unofficially, she is one of her country’s most accomplished spies, dispatched to catch a murderer. But as Shara pursues the killer, she starts to suspect that the beings who ruled this terrible place may not be as dead as they seem—and that Bulikov’s cruel reign may not yet be over.
Set in the imagined city of Bulikov, the novel is the first Bennett has penned which does not take place in a version of our world (although the parallels and echoes are there), but rather a fully realized secondary world. The gods (Divinities as they are referred to in the novel) have been driven from the Continent (where Bulikov is situated), having been pushed out by the Kaj – a legendary figure of the past. The “now” of the novel is filtered through the eyes of protagonist Shara, a spy working in Bulikov for her home land of Saypur with her “secretary” Sigurd, a hulking nigh-indestructible Dreyling, a humanoid race of the world. Saypur is drawn to Bulikov to investigate the murder of a prominent figure of Bulikov, setting the early portion of the novel as a mystery story after the murder of historian Dr. Efrem Pangyui. With the gods having been driven from Bulikov, the city has lost a great deal of its luster. Even with the milieu of a secondary world, Bennett frames the initial plot to lull the reader into the story with a murder mystery which possesses some spy elements.
Shara’s aunt is her boss, and a long-since dead relative of Shara’s is the one who led the revolt against the gods of Bulikov resulting in Saypuri dominance in the world. But as Shara suspects, gods don’t easily go into the great beyond.Her curiosity, knowledge of the gods, and lineage place her at the center of events of City of Stairs. In the character of Shara, Bennett has created somebody at a crossroads who is both smart and headstrong, willing to forge through bullshit and roadblocks to sate her curiosity and to find the truth. Shara is something of a scholar, having read as much as she could about the gods of Bulikov. The perfect interactions between Shara and Sigurd provided some of the best character/sidekick dialogue and interaction I’ve come across. Years of trust and knowledge of each other comes across so perfectly that large info-dumps of their shared history would have detracted from what Bennett so eloquently conveyed.
Bennett seamlessly brings together elements of spy fiction and epic/secondary world fantasy together in City of Stairs. Think a female James Bond set in a novel of Steven Erikson/Ian Esslemont’s Malazan. Right, that’s not exactly an exact “high-concept” for City of Stairs but rather a jumping off point into something much more complex. In some parts of the world, Bennett’s world feels more technologically advanced even if parts of Bulikov seem to be stuck in time while much of it could be analogous to one or two hundred years in our past. There’s a steampunk/clockpunk feel to the world in places, but I wouldn’t say that is a dominant aesthetic of the setting; Bulikov seems to be at a nexus of many things. I couldn’t help but feel a strong resonance between City of Stairs and the landmark graphic novel Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. Both begin (as superficially), politically charged mysteries, only to unfold into a story with more globally affecting ramifications. While there was only one (two if you include Adrian Veidt) godlike beings in Watchmen with many of the heroes no longer active, the sense of their absence and the void of power left in the wake of their absence felt similar here in City of Stairs in a way that worked very well for this reader.
The idea of the gods leaving the world is a trope that’s been utilized fairly often, but Bennett here plays that trope with engaging characters who act of their own volition and aren’t beholden to the worship of these gods. In that sense, the world in which this novel takes place can be viewed, in some ways, as post-apocalyptic. The world is recovering from something that shattered it in a drastic fashion, with remnants of what once was. But again, the post-apocalyptic elements aren’t like anything I can recall reading or encountering in fiction, but those tonal elements of a lost Power do permeate a great deal of the novel.
City of Stairs is a novel that begins as a spy-thriller, evolves into a novel of dead gods, colonialism and governmental control, where the key themes of faith, belief and truth are at a sometimes uncomfortable intersection. Specifically, Shara’s goal and obsession of finding the truth when she learns the death of an acquaintance is more than a simple murder. What she discovers leads to a plot that could shake the foundations of her country.
Few writers’ have been able to make me think deeply about their work while also entertaining me as has Bennett’s work. I loved the world-building in this novel, how the gods could be brought down by men (or a lesser set of beings) which I found to have some echoes of the Greek Gods toppling the Titans while the city of Bulikov itself had more of an Eastern European feel. The characters felt plausibly real, flawed and imperfect. The implied history to the characters in the narrative is just as powerful as the implied history to the world itself. I want to hang out with these people more, I want to read about this world.*
Every five or ten years, a novel will come along in the fantasy genre that remixes what came before in a powerful resonant fashion so as to seem newly sprung into the world (Books like A Game of Thrones, Perdido Street Station, The Blade Itself); watershed novels that evoke a perfect symmetry of resonance and freshness. In such novels, the writer works familiar elements together with previously unused elements and crafts an original vision unseen or unread before. City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett is one such novel; it was an immensely enjoyable and powerful novel that will stay with me for a very long while.
On a recent episode of the Coode Street Podcast just after the Shirley Jackson Awards ceremony (wherein Robert’s amazing 2013 novel American Elsewhere received the novel award), podcast host Gary Wolfe commented how the “award itself is very much at the intersection of several genres” which is where Bennett’s fiction often seems to rest comfortably (even if Robert himself understandably suggests this is an uncomfortable way to view a writer’s work, especially his).
It isn’t often that I feel intimidated to put together my thoughts into review for a book that was so impressive, but I’ll admit to City of Stairs intimidating me in this fashion. There’s a lot to unpack in the novel and Bennett is such a smart and engaging writer that none of what he packs really bursts the seams; instead, City of Stairs is a smooth novel of near perfection and the best Epic Fantasy novel I’ve read this year. I cannot recommend this novel highly enough. At this point in the year, it will take a great deal for any novel to knock this one off my Top Reads of 2014 list.
© 2014 Rob H. Bedford
Highest Possible Recommendation
*Mr. B is working on the sequel, yay!
http://robertjacksonbennett.wordpress.com/city-of-stairs/
Excerpt: http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/08/city-of-stairs-excerpt-robert-jackson-bennett
September 2014, Trade Paperback
ISBN 9780804137171, 464 pages
Review copy (ARC) courtesy of the publisher, Crown
There is a *lot* to unpack and talk about in City of Stairs. I approached reviewing it similarly, with trepidation