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ergative's review against another edition
4.25
This started out a little bit predictably, but then became quite bonkers. I enjoyed the mashup of detective noir and anarchist political unrest with secondary world fantasy with mind-controlling (alien?) city-ruler with lunar mood-magic and weird big moon-fish. I liked how the action was so thoroughly focused on the city and the islands, but the repeated reference to foreigners and ships and travel prevented it from feeling like an artificially constrained setting. I had the assumption in the back of my mind for quite a while that this was a space-colonization-aftermath type of tale, which is usually the case in stories with repeated references to original settlers with their much better technology, which has slowly been lost or damaged and people can keep it running but not quite fix it. However, as the book progresses it seems more like just secondary world fantasy, and the colonists came over on sea-ships, rather than space-ships. Even the magic pregnancy baby--not at all my favorite plot trope--ended in an unexpected way that I'm not sure I fully followed. Bravo, Neil Williamson!
zog_the_frog's review against another edition
2.0
I liked the steampunk country the author created and the fact that not everything was explained, but left to the imagination. However, that's where the positives ended for me. I struggled to finish this book, mainly because I couldn't get into the heads (or hearts) of any of the characters. Possibly too many questions were left unanswered too, but the real reason was that the story dragged so much in the middle of the book with the author trying to create tension with multiple story lines, but never quite achieving that goal. Almost junked, but can't say I'm glad I stayed the course. This is an author I'd not rush back to.
riverwise's review against another edition
3.0
I really enjoyed the first two thirds of this. The setting is excellent, the characters engaging and the plot intriguing. Unfortunately it fell away a bit at the end, as some of the balls that had been juggled nicely fell to the ground. Good read though, worth investigating .
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