City of Miracles (2017)
Robert Jackson Bennett
Sigrud
je Harkvaldsson
The
“Man”
I
have to say that Sigrud has been my favorite character in the Divine Cities
Trilogy. He just gets Stuff done. You have a divine sea monster in your river
send Sigrud. When the monster swallows
him whole (sending him to a personal Hell)
he will carve his way out killing the monstor in the process. That is classic Sigrud.
In
this story we see Sigrud working as a logger as one of the odd jobs that he has
been doing anonymously since the end of City of Blades – 13 years. The apparent assassination of Shara Komayd
brings him back to action. He is driven
to find out who did this to his former employer and friend. He eventually runs into a near divinity –
Nokov – a child of the original divinities
- Jokov and Ovos. Nokov is the
embodiment of the first night. He grows
more powerful by swallowing other children of divinities. His goal is to turn
the world into a black night. Shara’s
adopted daughter Taty is taken under Sigrud’s wing and protected but we know
there is more to her then we see.
The
real story though is the transformation of Sigrud from a noble man of action to
a happy old philosopher. Sad. I really liked the old Sigrud and hoped he
would good down fighting rather than as a whimper. However, I would guess that most people will
like Bennett’s conclusion to this trilogy better than I do. Conclusion?
I don’t know. There seems to be a
lot of open plot lines and interesting characters in this world that Bennett
could tap for another volume or even another series.
