City of Stairs is a 2014 fantasy novel by Robert Jackson Bennett. The first in his "Divine Cities" trilogy, it was published by Broadway Books.
City of Stairs is a 2014 fantasy novel by Robert Jackson Bennett. The first in his "Divine Cities" trilogy, it was published by Broadway Books.
For centuries, the city-state of Bulikov used the magic of its patron deities to rule the world — until their vassal state Saypur killed the gods and conquered Bulikov. Decades later, a Saypuri historian is murdered while investigating Bulikov gods and magic, and the Saypuri colonial administration in Bulikov sends Ashara Komayd to investigate.
City of Stairs was a finalist for the 2015 World Fantasy Award—Novel, [1] the 2015 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel, [2] and the 2015 British Fantasy Award for Best Fantasy Novel; [3] as well, an analysis of the nominations for the 2015 Hugo Awards has shown that, if it were not for the involvement of the Sad Puppies, City of Stairs would have been a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Novel. [4]
In the New York Times , N. K. Jemisin lauded Bennett's worldbuilding, noting that Bulikov and Saypur "refreshingly" evoke "czarist Russia and Mughal India" rather than "staid medieval Europe", but considered that the book's "espionage and police-procedural components" were its "least interesting"; Jemisin also faulted the characterization of Komayd as a "cipher" who is "(made) more interesting by (the) reflected quirkiness" of her associates, but who "never quite leaps off the page." [5] At Strange Horizons , Niall Harrison likewise praised the worldbuilding for its "coherency [and] completeness that precious few fantasies can match", and compared the violence and brutality of Komayd's assistant/bodyguard Sigrud to that of a Joe Abercrombie character. [6] National Public Radio criticized Bennett for opening the novel with a lengthy courtroom scene in which (to the "extraordinary boredom (of) all the characters involved") a Bulikov merchant is prosecuted for illegally displaying the symbol of a dead god, but praised the pacing of the rest of the novel, calling Komayd and Sigrud "a post-feminist Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser." [7]
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