Title: City of Stone and Silence
Series: Wells of Sorcery #2
Author: Django Wexler
Genre: Fantasy
Trigger Warnings: Violence, blood, death, gore, body horror, fire injury, police brutality, pedophilia (mentions), suicide, emotional abuse, torture, sexual content (mentions)
Spoiler Warning: This book is second in a series, and reading beyond this point will expose you to spoilers of book one.
Back Cover:
After surviving the Vile Rot, Isoka, Meroe, and the rest of Soliton’s crew finally arrive at Soliton’s mysterious destination, the Harbor–a city of great stone ziggurats, enshrouded in a ghostly veil of Eddica magic. And they’re not alone.
Royalty, monks, and madmen live in a precarious balance, and by night take shelter from monstrous living corpses. None know how to leave the Harbor, but if Isoka can’t find a way to capture Soliton and return it to the Emperor’s spymaster before a year is up, her sister’s Tori’s life will be forfeit.
But there’s more to Tori’s life back in Kahnzoka than the comfortable luxury Isoka intended for her. By night, she visits the lower wards, risking danger to help run a sanctuary for mage-bloods fleeing the Emperor’s iron fist. When she discovers that Isoka is missing, her search takes her deep in the mires of intrigue and revolution. And she has her own secret–the power of Kindre, the Well of Mind, which can bend others to its will. Though she’s spent her life denying this brutal magic, Tori will use whatever means she has to with Isoka’s fate on the line…
Review:
I really enjoyed the first book in this series, but I procrastinated starting this one. I had high hopes, but one of the reasons I loved book one so much was the setting of the Soliton, and I knew in this one they’d get off the ship. But eventually my desire for more of the adventure overcame my apprehension of a new setting.
I enjoyed precisely half of this book. That’s because this one splits perspective between Isoka and Tori. Isoka is still continuing her journey trying to get Soliton back home to save her sister. Tori is working underground against a corrupt government, having a moral crisis about being able to use her powers to hurt people, and liking a boy. Her story isn’t bad, particularly. It’s just the kind of thing I can find in at least a third of YA books I’d care to pick up. I’m reading this series for the weird, cool, and unique stuff that I got out of Isoka’s parts.
Isoka and the crew are off Soliton, but that’s okay because the Harbor is also a fascinating setting. It’s a massive abandoned city full of weird architecture, run by the angels and Eddica magic, and harboring a terrifying antagonist and hoards of undead. Plus there’s plenty of history to explore. There’s less of Isoka being absurdly powerful in this book, which was disappointing, and a lot more diplomacy and “why do these people trust me to lead them” crises. There was still plenty of fantastic action, though, plus the setting was interesting and Isoka learns about the history of the Harbor and about Eddica magic. I didn’t adore it like I did with the first book, but it was sill enjoyable.
I struggled with Tori’s parts of the story. I think part of that is because she wasn’t a protagonist in book one, so I didn’t have that connection going in. Her story also has much less action than I expected (and wanted) from this book. Tori avoids action – which, admittedly, is fair since her magic isn’t combat-oriented – and mostly has moral crises about using her power. I might not have disliked the moral crises so much if I’d liked her more. The romance wasn’t great, either. The love interest himself was fine, but I was annoyed by Tori’s … it’s not really pining, but she was fighting the fact that she liked him for no other reason than “I shouldn’t be romantically interested in anyone.”
Compared with Isoka’s story, everything in Tori’s story was boring – plot, setting, action, side characters, everything. In any other book, it might have been okay, but here it felt like an annoying delay of the things I actually wanted to read about, i.e. the weird and unique mysteries happening with Isoka. I think it made me like Isoka’s parts even more in contrast.
I am going to read the third book. I’m really invested in Isoka and her story (and, of course, all the action, interesting settings, and new information that happens around her). I want to see how the story ends. However, I’m afraid book three is also going to have Tori’s perspective and I won’t like those parts nearly as much. I will be reading it, but my expectations have been significantly lowered.
The Wells of Sorcery series:
- Ship of Smoke and Steel
- City of Stone and Silence
- Siege of Rage and Ruin
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