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A review by roguebelle
The People of the City by Marshall Ryan Maresca
5.0
Maresca has achieved something truly magnificent here. Tying together disparate threads of a multi-POV story is a challenge even in a single novel. To pull together the threads of four series, spanning twelve novels, is an absolutely masterful act.
In PEOPLE OF THE CITY, Maresca delivers on so many promises made across the past several years. Not everything ties up with a neat bow -- life and Maradaine go on, after all -- but this story satisfyingly answers many questions and rounds off an arc. The seven prime figures from all four series -- Veranix, the Rynax brothers, Minox and Satrine, Dayne and Jerinne -- all get sterling moments of heroism, and the chapters mid-book where the reader sees them moving towards each other in an inexorable collision course are so utterly thrilling. If you don't hear the Avengers theme playing in your head at least once during the Big Battle, I don't know what's wrong with you.
I have thrown the Maradaine series at so many people. If you love fantasy that takes place in fully-imagined worlds, so vital and vivid that you feel you could navigate your way through the streets, then you simply must read this saga. Maresca's city is filled with wonderful, complex characters, and he examines so many questions of right and wrong, justice and mercy, the reins of power and how people fight to control them. PEOPLE OF THE CITY does all this and more, celebrating the spirit that causes a hero to rise up and defend the place and people that they love.
In PEOPLE OF THE CITY, Maresca delivers on so many promises made across the past several years. Not everything ties up with a neat bow -- life and Maradaine go on, after all -- but this story satisfyingly answers many questions and rounds off an arc. The seven prime figures from all four series -- Veranix, the Rynax brothers, Minox and Satrine, Dayne and Jerinne -- all get sterling moments of heroism, and the chapters mid-book where the reader sees them moving towards each other in an inexorable collision course are so utterly thrilling. If you don't hear the Avengers theme playing in your head at least once during the Big Battle, I don't know what's wrong with you.
I have thrown the Maradaine series at so many people. If you love fantasy that takes place in fully-imagined worlds, so vital and vivid that you feel you could navigate your way through the streets, then you simply must read this saga. Maresca's city is filled with wonderful, complex characters, and he examines so many questions of right and wrong, justice and mercy, the reins of power and how people fight to control them. PEOPLE OF THE CITY does all this and more, celebrating the spirit that causes a hero to rise up and defend the place and people that they love.