City of Stairs

Written by Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs is a great urban fantasy novel that frames its narrative around religion, persecution, and war, excelling when it comes to worldbuilding, but faltering when it’s time to build suspense at the beginning.

After an important Saypuri historian is found dead in the ancient city of Bulikov, Saypur tasks a young female ambassador, Shara, with uncovering what has really transpired there. Shara, however, soon understands that her investigation will grow beyond her wildest dreams as she proceeds to unearth uncomfortable secrets about Bulikov’s history and her own people.

The novel’s setting is its greatest strength. The city of Bulikov is deeply marked by its traumatic past: once ruled by Gods, it is now governed by the people of Saypur, who deny access to the city’s history to all its people and outlaw all its ancient religious practices. As Shara walks through its dilapidated streets, questioning Bulikov’s bitter inhabitants, the ambassador starts to feel the claustrophobic, hostile atmosphere of the place. Bulilov is described as a living entity, being personified constantly to make it feel like a dangerous figure who’s always watching: “The city knows. It remembers. Its past is written in its bones, though now the past speaks in silences.” Sometimes, it’s even animalized (“Bulikov’s like an elephant, see? It’s got a long memory.”). The point of these descriptions is to reinforce how the city is practically a ticking bomb, just a few minutes away from exploding. The past is a dangerous, lingering thing in City of Stairs: its scars are seen and felt by the characters, being reflected on the crumbling state of the buildings, the twisted forms of the streets, and the aura of imminent revenge that looms over each line spoken by Bulikov’s residents.

However, if Saypur is now the oppressor, it was not always like that. The past that Bulikov is so hell-bent on remembering is of the time when it was ruled by Gods and, with the aid of those Gods, it ruled over everything else. Magic was a real presence in Bulikov and, if its architecture is now deformed and twisted, it’s precisely because it was made with divine magic. With the fall of the Gods, the city’s material foundations also collapsed.

One of the most recurring themes in the novel is the problems that arise from religion. In City of Stairs, religion is a source of resistance – a form to preserve the past – but also a force of oppression. The inspiration here is clearly the Old Testament, mainly the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy (“YOU HAVE MIXED LINENS AND COTTONS WITH YOUR GARMENTS,” a character cries in anger during a brilliant scene), with Bulikov’s residents longing for the arbitrary laws that used to cast punishment on their enemies. Religion is depicted as the cultural consequence of people’s desire for a scapegoat for their hate and anger, providing them with rules and laws that serve as a perfect justification to punish others – one that is perfect because it is sacred and so cannot be questioned. As one of the characters points out: “Look at them! They’re praying to pain, to punishment! They think that hate is holy, that every part of being human is wrong.”

Shara comes into the mix as a member of another form of religion: patriotism. She watches people commit horrible acts and sacrifices in the name of their abstract religions and judges them but acts in a very similar manner in the name of her country. She is bitterly aware, however, of the nature of her position: “We must be judicious and bloodless. I am to be, as always, a simple tool in the hands of my nation,” she says. Shara may know she’s a tool but she still strives to make the best of what she’s got, using her role as ambassador to make small changes in the world and save a few people. Of course, she is often put back in her place. As an old friend of Shara tells her, “You’re not an agent of change, Shara. You don’t make the world better – you work to keep things how they are,” her friend says, right before putting the final nail on the coffin of her good intentions: “You are a representative of your country. And countries do not feel sorrow.”

Shara, then, is a character at odds with her political position. She is supposed to reinforce Saypur’s oppression in Bulikov but downright refuses to do so. Her narrative arc has her trying to find a way to unite both nations without resorting to violence while having to face the prospect that her goal may be unreachable, utopic. After all, she is working inside a system that does not want correcting. As her aunt explains to her, “But you must know that if corruption is powerful enough, it’s not corruption at all – it’s law. Unspoken, unwritten, but law.”

Her bodyguard, Sigrud, also stands out as a powerful, merciless bodyguard. He is given some time to shine, participating in an epic battle that reflects his inner demons and tragic backstory. He’s a one-note character, for sure, but he works tremendously as a secondary one: he’s a gloomy man who likes to think “the cold, the dark, and the waiting death” are what life is all about, but his dark, serious demeanor often betrays his uncaring words, revealing a man that is haunted by his past but tries his hardest to pretend otherwise. Since his intentions and thoughts are mostly kept hidden by the narrative – as the story follows Shara and not him – the character also feels mysterious, a cipher that we must decode throughout the story.

One of City of Stair’s main strengths is how much room it gives its secondary characters to breathe. Even an old lady, whose role in the plot is just to be a witness in Shara’s investigation, is given traits that push us to empathize with her. She’s confessing to a crime – copying classified documents – but it’s clear that she was just being used and knows nothing about anything that’s happening. The moment that makes her come alive is when she describes in detail how she was able to make handwritten copies of the documents, and we can notice that she is extremely proud of what she has done because… she can’t read.

That said, the novel’s main shortcoming is actually the pacing of Shara’s investigation. Since it reveals the interesting aspects of Bulikov and Saymur, the fact that the investigation takes a while to gain traction makes the narrative struggle to find its footing during the first act. The suspense takes a while to build, making the novel’s beginning its worst, most boring part.

City of Stairs is a great fantasy novel that discusses religion and oppression with a great cast of characters and fantastic worldbuilding. It may take a while to become the best it can be but, when it’s at its peak, City of Stairs makes the wait more than worth it.

December 16, 2024.