I very much enjoyed this book and found both the setting and the characters greatly compelling. Yet it’s so much more than just an exciting steampunk adventure done well.
Josiah Bancroft depicts characters helplessly struggling amidst mysterious, invisible forces, their fight and efforts drawing us into the cold, muddy waters of alienation, isolation, uncertainty and despair, the author repeatedly making us question moral values through their actions and contemplations. Due to the carefully detailed worldbuilding and visualisation despite the unrealistic setting the world feels very real, its bizarre location and occurrences often offering a clear reflection on our own world and society.
Apart from wanting to know the answers to my plot-related questions, what also kept me going and what makes me look forward to reading the upcoming books in the series, is seeing how the characters build relationships under these harsh circumstances, how these relationships change and how the characters themselves change as they fight their ways through the dangers, trying to get back into their old lives which might just never be found again.
Mitriel Faywood 
Reblogged this on J P Ashman and commented:
Our Mitriel writes another lovely review about a book that is receiving a lot of praise from all areas of the genre, including Mark Lawrence himself. And Josiah seems like a nice bloke too, from my chats with him on Twitter. I look forward to reading this in the future.
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