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The Drowning City by Amanda Downum


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Extremely recent debut. A second world southeast Asian-ish fantasy. Forensic necromancer comes south to the drowning city to secretly foment revolt. Cue a lot of spy back-and-forth, dueling strategies of violence and nonviolence, imperial politics, elemental magic, and a demon.

An interesting book that I wasn't all that interested in. It happens that way sometimes – you're reading, and you think things like hey, that's a nice image, and this is more complicated than I was expecting, and ooh, volcano. But the circuit never quite closes, and you spend the entire book on the outside looking in. Which is not my preferred reading experience.

Still, the end had an awful lot of wiz-bang to it, and I'm interested enough to pick up the sequel next year.

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