City of Miracles (The Divine Cities 3) by Robert Jackson Bennett.

Stars: 5 out of 5

I love the Divine Cities series and I await every new book with great trepidation and excitement, because I know that Robert Jackson Bennett won’t disappoint. I read and reviewed the two previous books as well, if you are interested to read my opinions: City of Stairs and City of Blades.

City of Miracles is the closing chapter in the stories of a lot of characters that I grew to know and love in the two previous books, so I have a bitter-sweet feeling upon finishing this book. Even if the author continues this series, it will be a different world with different characters, because the events in this book brought the end of an era and paved the road for a new one.

Don’t get me wrong, I will still pick up the next book with just as much trepidation and will be excited to see the direction in which this world will evolve, but it will sure feel empty without Shara and Sigrud and all the others…

Sigrud had been hiding, moving from place to place, from one meaningless job to another, just waiting for Shara to call him back. Instead, he learns one day that the former Prime Minister Shara Komayd had been assassinated. And Sigrud sets out on a journey of revenge, doing what he does best – track and kill those who killed his friend. Only there is a lot more at stake than anyone could have imagined, because all these years Shara had been waging a secret war with a Divinity, and the outcome of this war will change the world.

When previous books were about the Divine wars and its casualties, as well as the guilt of the survivors, City of Miracles is about lost souls. It’s about the war orphans, both human and Divine, whose lives had been shattered by war and who can’t quite fit in this brave new world.

We know that the Radj killed all of the Divinities except one, but what happened to the multitude of Divine children that those Divinities created in the thousands of years of their existence? It was assumed that they simply vanished when their parent Divinities died or were hunted down and exterminated as well. And the most powerful ones certainly met that fate. But what of the weaker ones? The unimportant ones that didn’t have their own followers and had always lived in the shadow of their powerful siblings and parents?

Turns out they survived. Kolkan hid them, made them seem human, erased all memories of their divine nature. He hoped to bring them all back once the war was over and he came out of hiding himself, but we all know how that played out in City of Stairs. So those children, those orphans, are condemned to drift from orphanage to orphanage, from family to family, never aging, never remembering their past, their memories resetting every time their families start to wonder why the child they adopted 7-8 years ago didn’t seem to age. Yes, they survived, but isn’t that a terrible price to pay?

But what happens when some of those Divine children remember who they are? What happens if one of them was captured by the new regime and tortured for years? Wouldn’t he want revenge when he escaped?

I think this book, more than the previous two, shows that no matter what happens to the world, no matter what horrors, humans will find a way to survive, adapt and move past it. And the biggest proof of that is the city of Bulikov – we saw it in ruins in City of Stairs, its citizens beaten down and oppressed, yet in City of Miracles, merely 50 years later, it’s a thriving metropolis again, where the old and the new are intertwined and found a way to coexist. Or Voortyashtan, where Signe’s dream of opening the river to ship traffic again is finally a reality, even if Signe died without seeing it happen…

Legacy is another recurring theme in this book. What do we leave behind when we die? Signe left a dream of an engineering miracle and others made it a reality. Shara spent her whole life trying to change Saypur and bring peace to the continent, and she succeeded. Even Kolkan managed to leave a legacy by saving all those Divine children from certain death.

I think this is the strongest message of this book. That we need to live our lives in such a way that we leave behind a positive legacy, instead of a destructive one, even if this legacy is important only to our family and friends…

So to summarize, this book is a must read, but I would recommend starting at the beginning of the series with City of Stairs, following up with City of Blades, and finishing off with City of Miracles.

Borderline (the Arcadia Project 1) by Mishell Baker.

Stars: 5 out of 5

A year ago, Millie listened to the little voice in her head telling her that her life is worthless and stepped off a roof. She survived, but lost both her legs and was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. Now she lives in a mental institution and is pretty sure that both her promising filmmaking career and her life is pretty much over. That is until she gets a second chance to make something out of her disaster when she accepts to work for the Arcadia Project.

When you read the blurb for Borderline, it sounds like a generic urban fantasy series. Even the supernatural creatures are generic – fae have been done before. You might be tempted to dismiss this book right away, but that would be a big mistake because you would lose the opportunity to read a very good story.

I picked up this book almost as an afterthought. Nothing in my reading pile sounded good at the time and Amazon put this in the “Also Bought” suggestions, so I gave it a go, not expecting much… I finished it in one day. I literally only stopped long enough to eat and didn’t move of my couch until I turned the last page. Good thing it was a Saturday.

I loved this book. I loved the story. I loved Millie. I loved all the secondary characters. I loved the setting and the world they lived in.

Mishell Baker has an interesting take on the fae and their influence on our world. In Borderline, every creative person has a muse, who is a fae. It’s a symbiotic relationship – the fae gives his or her human inspiration to create art, write books, film movies, and so on. In exchange, the fae who are paired with a human become capable of logical thinking and can grasp such disciplines as mathematics, architecture, engineering, etc. There is a quid pro quo in this relationship with both parties gaining something from each other.

I like that the longer the fae stays on Earth, the more “assimilated” it becomes, slowly losing its creativeness while it acquires more logical aptitudes. That’s why the Acradia Project has rules and regulations in place. That’s why they keep track of all the fae and follow a strict schedule as to when and for how long they can remain on Earth.

It’s not often that you find a disabled protagonist in a book, especially one that doesn’t transform into a disabled superhero by the end of the book or whose disability is conveniently forgotten about or set aside when the plot needs it.

Millie is not like that. She isn’t just token broken. As a double amputee, she faces a lot of everyday challenges and the book doesn’t gloss over that or give her a sudden ability to levitate. She also has a serious mental illness that impacts her everyday life and her interactions with everyone she encounters. You can see that the author did some in depth research into borderline personality disorder and thought about how this illness will impact the plot.

I like that despite the challenges that she faces, Millie has a very serious and down to earth approach to her life and her struggles. Apart from that first fateful jump off a roof, she never exhibits more suicidal tendencies. Once she learns she is a borderline, she learns everything she can about both the illness and the coping mechanisms that would help her function in society. I love the fact that when Millie has episodes, she is rational enough to understand what is happening and that she even tries to apply the techniques she learned to try and deescalate the situation. Sometimes it works, other times it doesn’t, but it’s nice to see a protagonist who tries to lead a normal life despite everything.

The story is well written and fast paced, and if you are anything like me, it will grip you and not let you go until the end.

So I will definitely recommend Borderline to all my friends and I can’t wait to pick up Phantom Pains, the second book in the series.