City of Stairs - Robert Jackson Bennett

Broadway Books is giving this one a big push, I've been sitting on a review copy of this novel for months now. I've seen a few reviews pop up over the past few weeks already, it would appear they've been liberal with review copies. It won't be out until September so I didn't put it at the top of the reading list. City of Stairs is Robert Jackson Bennett's fifth novel and the fist one I've read. From what I can tell, Bennett writes novels that aren't firmly planted in one genre. This novel could be considered a fantasy, but there are elements of other genre's mixed in. His novel American Elsewhere (2013) won him a Shirley Jackson award, which leans towards dark fantasy and horror. Bennett may have convinced me to try that one. I very much liked City of Stairs and it would fit into one of the reading challenges I'm taking part in this year.

The city of Bulikov was once the center of the world. A place where the gods came together and miracles were an everyday occurrence. Then, a man from Saypur, one of the conquered nations of the world, chafing under the rule of the gods, rose up and in a swift and brutal rebellion killed the gods. The city collapsed in on itself and almost a century later, is still mostly a ruin. Efforts to regain some of the former glory are blocked by the new rulers, and knowledge of the history of the city and religions that once thrived there is extremely restricted. The old gods are not that easily defeated though. Under the surface, a rebellion is simmering. When a historian from Saypur is murdered, intelligence officer Shara stumbles across evidence that the status quo Saypur has so carefully tried to maintain is about to be disrupted.

What follows is a bit spoilerish, you have been warned.