A continent has been constructed from 4 parts by the gods, or were they aliens? Now the continent threatens to tear itself apart again. Unless the right people are found to feed the machine that keeps it all together.
A fantasy novel by Sharon Shinn, who has written many books that mostly don’t look appealing to me. This one was entertaining enough though.
A capable engineer treats the world as a machine in order to exact revenge for a personal injustice. The enormous human consequences are regrettable collateral damage but an unavoidable part of the logic, at least to the engineer. Set in a medieval world in which one anomalous city state is a guilds-run bureaucratised industrial power.
Published 2005, Part 1 of a trilogy. K.J. Parker is a pseudonym for Tom Holt.
This is a collection of short stories by N.K. Jemisin (I’ve been reading her work in the past weeks, similar to how I read all books by other authors when I encounter something I liked.). The title attracted me, and I didn’t know it was a collection of short stories. Jemisin says she started writing short stories as stepping stones towards novel writing. She didn’t want to at first, did it following advice, but came to enjoy it.
Some of the stories are recognisable from her novels, where elements got re-used, or entire worlds flowed from the short story. There are many other stories in there, which allows one to hope for more novels 🙂
I also read Emergency Skin, a story not in this collection.
Good world building, and an intriguing premise of dream centered magic / priesthoods. Very enjoyable read, although the Broken Earth trilogy was more impressive / impactful to me. See N.K. Jemisin’s site for more of her books.