City of Blades: Book Two of the Divine Cities Trilogy

City of Blades by Robert Jackson Bennett is the second book in the Divine Cities series, and I thought it was an interesting follow-up to City of Stairs. This book focuses on General Turyin Mulaghesh, a retired soldier who gets sent to the city of Voortyashtan to investigate something strange going on there. What starts off as a simple mission turns into something much bigger involving missing people, old secrets, and a goddess of war who is supposed to be dead.

This one got a little lost in its own complexities. Bennett does a good job expanding the world he created in City of Stairs, and while this book can be read as a standalone, it probably shouldn't. The characters are recycled into new incarnations, and events from the previous book definitely inform the story. While the complexities are well handled, the overall explanation gets muddled, partially because it makes a cursory amount of sense, but doesn't really logically mesh with the world rules.

I enjoyed the first of this series immensely, and very much loved the perspective of the second from my favorite character. My only qualm would be the style of the dialogue, but there was really nothing wrong with it.