[Abyss]

so, my peoples, we have conferred and we have discussed, Polishgenius and I have thrown gloves and challenges and wedgies around and now a bunch of us have bought begged borrowed or otherwise acquired copies of Davinia Evans THE BURNISHED CITY, at the very least book 1....

NOTORIOUS SORCEROR

....and now we're going to read it. Some of us. Others like me are just going to trade veiled looks and poorly hidden smirks and stop that PG i know where you live.

And just to complicate life, for all the same reasons a bunch of us are in parallel going to be reading Rachel Aaron's THE LEGEND OF ELI MONPRESS bk 1 THE SPIRIT THIEF ... as we seem to think the two series have similar themes and tones and oh i dunno, i was drunk when PG suggested it and a bunch of you thought it was a good idea and here we are look don't blame me for this stuff i'm making it up as i go....

....thus i have no idea how this is supposed to work so just mark/block SPOILERS clearly so people know where you're at in the books and have fun!

[Tiste Simeon]

The first book is currently £3.99 on Kindle: https://amzn.eu/d/0hQThnmP

I think I'm going to do this one over the other but aim to get both read in good time.

[Abyss]

....AND SO IT BEGINS....

Chapter 1 -

Spoiler

credit where due, the author drops a tiny fraction of the action shortly to come as a teaser ahead of the start. There's a bit of a YA vibe here, the young thief dude planning a caper, meets his slightly younger possible romantic interest sidekick. I like the Indian/Middle-East vibe, am hoping it's a little deeper than just names and titles, will see. I was worried for a moment that the author was going overboard with colourful metaphors but it seems she was just setting the stage a bit, then pulled it back to focus on the action.

I get a bit of a fun Malazan warren vibe from Siyon's venture into the elemental space and Zagiri's role, and i liked their very brief clash with the 'Angel', suitably alien and weird without trying too hard to show the reader too much.

I very much liked how a burned rope is suddenly the most valuable thing he owns and what it tells us about the setting and magic, again without revealing too much.

The characters themselves aren't wildly original yet, but the world the author is setting up has my interest and i like her 'show don't tell' and 'don't show too much' style.

...so far so good, i'm in.

[Abyss]

Tiste Simeon, on 27 March 2026 - 04:01 PM, said:

The first book is currently £3.99 on Kindle: https://amzn.eu/d/0hQThnmP

I think I'm going to do this one over the other but aim to get both read in good time.

If useful it's also on Spotify in the '17hrs of free earbook per month because we like you and hate amazon' category.