For those who haven't found an early copy somewhere, here is the prologue.

Looks like Jim is doing the same thing he does with The Dresden Files. Will probably get a chapter per week until release.

 

I raise an eyebrow at this seeming reference to The Wheel of Time. Will there be reference to a "third age, an age yet to come, an age long past" as well?

 

So I just finished it, it was a fun ride throughout and a nice self contained adventure. So often a series starts and its obvious there was little planning done to make the individual books hold together. The cats are amazing.

 

For the next several days, I have no time to read. If anyone spoils anything outside of sp tags, I will choke a bitch.

 

I wouldn't be shocked if it was meant as a reference. I mean, Dresden Files is full of reference jokes, and Codex Alera certainly had some nods to other fantasy series in it (like the giant wall in the north of the Empire keeping the snow-people out).

 

Did order the book, if only to give this series a chance since I liked Butcher's last two series. The reviews on goodreads seemed rather mixed, but people here seem more positive.

 

So, I read it through and found it...experimental. The characters are introduced and seem more or less tropes. That's not to say it's poorly written, but the characters don't really pop, almost as though it's expected that we're familiar enough with the ideas, like a superhero or ensemble action flick:

The rich, young, noble hot shot; the noble warrior born of a cadet house, the dishonorably-discharged overly-honorable captain with a ruined ship and loyal crew; the girl dragged from happy suburbia to become a heroine; the two mentally dysfunctional 'mages'; the bookish and irrelevant figurehead Spirearch, who's far more capable than he's perceived; Grimm's ex-comrades, one loyal, one treacherous, who have risen in rank from his sacrifice; Grimm's fickle and devious ex and rival captain; etc.

I'm sincerely hoping we'll return to some of the Butcher we know and love, because I'm fearful that his success has lead to something of a decent plotbunny that wouldn't be published but for his name recognition and fanbase.

I largely enjoyed the aerial/nautical battles and themes. It gussied up the "Master and Commander" and Horatio Hornblower style in a way that made the minutiae on ships and combat more readable to my taste.

I largely enjoyed the cats, being the first spark of innovative characters, but felt that it almost got a bit crack-ish, like a slightly overlong joke by a cat owner about cats' views on humans... It ends up being a rather cliché outsider's view on humanity, not unlike a Marat/Canim/Fae.

The world itself is interesting enough, albeit derivative, but the details, again to my taste, were a bit light. Others' might find it tight and fast paced rather than ponderous, as world building sometimes is.

Spoiler

The plot breaks down to a rival spire (Aurora) mounting a partially false-flag surprise attack to both destabilise Spire Albion and allow the etherealist puppet of an über-evil entity, Mme. Cavendish, to burn down The Temple of the Way's library, to hide the destruction of "The Index." As a part of the plot, evil "Surface" spiders (weavers) are in turn puppeted by Cavendish to facilitate the sabotage and book burning plan, which is partially foiled when one monk of The Way saves a copy, and the crew later retrieves Cavendish's (after she memorized hers).

The group achieves a somewhat Pyrrhic Victory by destroying the flagship that hobbled the main-character's, Captain Grimm's, privateering vessel: a PR/morale victory. Everything is set up for a coming war, the roots of which we know nothing about, short of the fact that it must come from Aurora's overlarge population, Albion's likely abuses, and the evil mind controlling spirit, likely bent on some for of world domination/destruction/rebirth.

I felt that the characters fulfill the roles they need to allow the plot to progress but didn't add much depth or nuance. Gwen can fight and knows crystals and can help repair the ship, while providing biting comments; Benedict has a friend in the Temple of the Way and warriorborn powers (what are the mechanics of a warriorborn, btw?); Grimm's got a crew, good instincts, and honor; Bridget rises from her middle class lifestyle to become a heroine and set the stage for a romance with Benedict; Folly overcomes an attempted mind rape from The Spirit while Etherealisting groups of spiders at key points; and Rowl is interesting, but mostly just a cat with intelligence and an attitude.

 

So I finally got around to read it and I think its pretty standard fantasy fare that in my opinion lacks something that makes it truly special/interesting.

The general story is pretty boring and full of bad cliches, especially cliches from this genre - I actually think that I have seen pretty much every idea in this book done better somewhere else with the only exception being the talking cats ( which to me were far too campy). I also really have enough of the "small band of outcasts rescues the world from big, bad evil" type of stories. Is that really the only plot people can think of when they write fantasy? The story also lacked a real, satisfying end and instead seems to be satisfied with being nothing more than pure sequel bait.

The characters were mostly okay but also walking stereotypes with absolutely no depth or surprises. I actually liked Gwen, the noble daughter, and thought she had potential as a lead character since we seldom see such arrogant, self centered main characters and thought that Folly was a strong supporting character. I think a story focused on those two would have been interesting but sadly most of the scenes are written from the perspective of either of the boring captain or the very boring teenage heroine from the middle/lower class.
I also found that the cats added nothing to the story and could/should have been cut without losing anything interesting. They simply felt campy/nerdy and out of place and I am saying that as a cat person. The same could be said of the warriorborn since that whole idea added absolutely nothing to the story besides some light drama and seemed to serve absolutely no purpose. (Though I guess that Butcher plans expand on the whole theme in the later books considering their existence and the whole half-soul thing).
I also dislike the heavy use of multiple PoV`s and think that its at least partially the reason why this story felt so weak since the characters did get so little screen-time/character development.

The writing and action scenes were well done and I don't regret buying/reading it but I won't spend any of my free time re-reading it or reminiscing/talking about it with my friends.

 

I got the audio book. The start is.... Well, it's hard to get into.

I'm not far at all though. Just met the first cat.

 

I feel like Gwen is supposed to be his Dresden character from outside their head.

Overall, none of the characters were really interesting but for Rowl, and even then it was more of a gimmick on top of the "rough with a heart of gold" archetype that won't hold up for more than a book. I enjoyed reading it well enough, but it wasn't particularly great and I suspect I'll completely forget about it until the sequel

 

I really liked it and I honestly don't have nearly as many gripes as other people here, I share some of the feelings in this thread but not nearly as strongly.

Gwen/??? OTP though, Gwen is the best.

 

So, finished the book.

It was fun, is, I guess, the biggest compliment I can give the book. It wasn't the best thing ever, or the most engaging. It didn't have the best plot, the best characters or was particularly memorable. I am not eagerly awaiting part 2 and am fine whenever I can read it and honestly, I would be fine never reading another entry into this series again, although, I will read book 2 should I be aware of its release.

But I had a lot of fun. Some of the characters were fun, the cats were fun, although I can understand it if people thought them silly/campy, the air ship naval battles were fun, the steampunk stuff was fun, the dialogue and banter could be fun.

However, it was forgettable and bland in many ways as well.

Spoiler

The characters, I think, were the biggest flaw. It had just too many POV characters. It had Gwen, Grimm, Bridget, Rowl, Benedict, Folly, that enemy soldier and that's pretty much the whole cast. I am honestly surprised we didn't see the POV of the other crewmembers as well. That's just too many, especially when they are often in the same place. Game of Thrones, this book is definitely not. Codex Alera had a better handle on that.

Honestly, he should have cut Grimm, Benedict and Folly. Rowl probably as well, although I really enjoyed his chapters, we didn't need to see them.

I agree with Oliver Kingston, in that Gwen was the strongest character and by far the most interesting. I loved her, wished she would have more chapters. She is awesome, interesting, has room to grow, has the best interactions with other people and is just entertaining with her comments and attempts at diplomacy.

Bridget was okay, didn't hate her chapters, but didn't love her either. She was okay, although, I always felt like she stepped out of a Jane Austen novel, which I actually liked. As if one of the Dashwood sisters from Sense and Sensibility had followed the call to war.

Her romance was grating, though. Not that it was terrible, but in that it seemed a bit forced, more on that later, though.

Benedict was alright, liked him, actually, his interaction and banter with Gwen was fun although he absolutely did not need a POV chapter.

Same with Rowl, really. He was a novel character and I adored his chapters but really, they were hardly necessary. Or he should have gotten a bigger part and Bridget's chapters should have been scratched. He's enbtertaining, though.

The enemy soldier was bland and utterly forgettable. His one distinguishing feature was that he was a decent human being who did not relish in harming or murdering innocents but would do his duty.

Grimm was the biggest misstep of the book though. Completely unoriginal, so bland, a character that has been in so many movies or books, that I find myself so thoroughly bored by him that it was hard not to skim his chapters. There is absolutely nothing new about him. He is a polite, poor man's Captain Malcolm Reynolds. As saevanus said, that's all he is. The honourable captain who got screwed over by the incompetent brass, who is loyal to his crew and loves his ship and bla bla bla. His whole story arc was boring. Him interacting with his friends and old acquaintances, him interacting with the mages, his ex wife, his crew, his new second in command, with the girls and so on. Nothing new and the second you know what his character was, you knew how he was going to react and behave at any given situation. We have seen this archetype too often.

The only possible way he could bore me more is if Butcher forces a romance between him and Gwen.

Speaking of romance, while not super terrible, the one between Benedict and Bridget just was...lackluster. I honestly did not feel it at all and it had to be forced a la Attack of the Clones by either other characters commenting on how they were obviously attracted to each other or them having a rather out of nowhere romantic moment.

Not sure if it is my yuri goggles talking, but it seemed obvious to me that a romance between Gwen and Bridget was set up far more. Those two were the first to meet, they bonded, they clashed, they had an adventure together then had their own thing and they ended up by respecting and liking each other. No need to pair them up at the end of the book if this was the start for a series but it was more than solid groundwork. No need to shoehorn Benedict in there. Hopefully that changes.

As to Folly and the magic, well, I liked her, but mainly because I love Luna and she was pretty much the same character. For a while, I thought I was reading a crossover fanfic.

The rest was okay, magic, world and all was meh. It worked but not exactly memorable.

All that said, it was still a fun book to read, I just expected a bit better.

3.5/5

 

Worst Butcher book I've ever read. Now, that is a very high bar, but early Dresden and Furies of Calderon were better in my opinion. It has a very high threshold for where it could go, but it was flat to me. Very flat. Grimm and weirdo were the only characters I really liked.

 

Having read it, I found the book enjoyable enough, but the ending felt really unsatisfying. And what particularly irked me about it was that the book did the exact same things that bothered me with the ending of Furies of Calderon.

Spoiler

Namely, it felt like the plot stretched really hard to let every single villainous character escape completely unscathed, because Butcher wanted to reuse all of those characters for the rest of the series. Which hurt the drama (and my suspension of disbelief). Cavendish and Sark just casually shrug off what ought to be crippling wounds, because the plot requires them to remain functional.

It also had the downside of making it feel like the protagonists didn't really accomplish anything. Seriously, their only real victory was capturing some no-name captain of big a ship that only showed up in the prologue of the book. And by all indications, that's not actually something that matters, since Cavendish and her master are the real Big Bads. And they pretty much won an unqualified victory.

Honestly, it felt like the book spent so much time setting everything up for the rest of the series that Butcher forgot to give it a satisfying story of its own. Pretty much everything is just introducing all the players who will be important to the rest of the series.

All that aside, it did have some good stuff. Gwen was interesting and I wish we'd seen more of her, and Rowl was very amusing. And thus far, Butcher's usually pretty good about providing a decent payoff to all the things he sets up.

 

n

Surprising.

Spoiler

Gwen and Rowl were two of the least favorite things in the book for me. Rowl as a concept is cool, who doesn't like cat povs? But it was SO repetitive as to be annoying.

Gwen was also: "High class lady getting a lesson! Without really learning anything."

But, that's my take.

 

The book didn't work for me. It's too bland. I mean, honestly, whatever people are saying in the spoiler tags is true. I'd go far enough as to say that the first 2/3rds of the book were so boring I took around a week to read them. The last third was enjoyable enough to finish quickly.

Spoiler

Butcher's entire thing about having an "Enemy" whom everyone needs to band together to fight is quickly growing old. He's doing it in every series he's writing. And in this series, at least, the characters seem pretty 2-dimensional to me. Harry Dresden, as the main character in the Dresden Files, is pretty 3-dimensional, and while his associates in the first couple of books did not have a lot of nuance to them, they worked. He utilised tropes there too, but not to the extreme we see in Cinder Spires.

Grimm is unremarkable. And the "incompetence of the fleet", in this case, reminds me of all the terribad fan fiction which rails about how incompetent the Ministry of Magic is. "Mysterious competent puppet master who's supposed to be a figurehead" is also a trope. He used it in the case of Gaius Sextus in Codex Alera. And now we have another person like that. Brilliant. Gwen, being a typical "enlightened noble", remains enjoyable, though not extremely enjoyable. Benedict and Bridget are both tropes. I don't particularly mind Benedict, though Bridget is extremely... I guess Jane Austen-ish is the best description, as given earlier. The cat, Rowl, is gimmicky. His POV was overused. Had Butcher given us no more than a couple of chapters with it, it would have been much better. And I pretty much skimmed over the enemy soldier's POV.

Overall, I'd say that with some plot points being recycled from previous series (mostly Alera at this point), and tropes filling in for characters, this is Butcher's worst effort yet. He said in an interview that he's doing this for alimony, and it shows. It's a listless effort. I will buy and read the sequel, but only because of loyalty for Butcher, not because I'm looking forward to seeing how this story progresses.

3/5

 

I've got the audio book and I'm struggling through the beginning.

 

I found it difficult to remain interested at times but overall I enjoyed it for what it is. It's a good solid read that never has aspirations to be earth shattering.

I think it suffered largely because he was trying to establish this new world while working a plot around it.

 

I read this a week ago.

Honestly, I think it's probably the best of all of Butcher's debut novels, but nothing special. It's better than Storm Front and Furies of Calderon, but not by much.

If the Butcher pattern holds true though, then it should start to get very interesting fast. There's a lot of small things in there that point to more interesting shit going on.