Book Review: The Dead City & The Dark Earth Below
My Amazon review of 
marthawells' The Dead City & The Dark Earth Below:
The Dead City & the Dark Earth Below is an embarrassment of riches: five full stories of the Three Worlds, chock full of fascinating world and culture-building where we are gracefully clued into the societies, rules, and norms of behavior of these different worlds without any clunky exposition. You don't have to be a shape-shifter like Moon or Jade to live fantastic adventures here, either, which I found delightful. Another thing I found very interesting about Martha Wells' universe is the sentient beings that populate her worlds are not always the highest on the food chain. Life is a daily struggle for survival, yet her characters balance this with family and home and interacting with outsiders with agree-upon rules of polite behavior that cross strata.
It wouldn't be fair for me to pick out my favorite story; I loved them all for different reasons. So I'll just say they are all meaty with great suspense and reveal new aspects of our favorite characters as well as introducing fascinating new ones. And there are some really excellent twists that are terrifically imaginative. Five stars from me, and seriously, how can I get a ticket to the planet of Three Worlds? Or, at least, pre-order the next book?
Oh, and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the gorgeous cover art, which is just breathtaking in detail.
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marthawells' The Dead City & The Dark Earth Below:The Dead City & the Dark Earth Below is an embarrassment of riches: five full stories of the Three Worlds, chock full of fascinating world and culture-building where we are gracefully clued into the societies, rules, and norms of behavior of these different worlds without any clunky exposition. You don't have to be a shape-shifter like Moon or Jade to live fantastic adventures here, either, which I found delightful. Another thing I found very interesting about Martha Wells' universe is the sentient beings that populate her worlds are not always the highest on the food chain. Life is a daily struggle for survival, yet her characters balance this with family and home and interacting with outsiders with agree-upon rules of polite behavior that cross strata.
It wouldn't be fair for me to pick out my favorite story; I loved them all for different reasons. So I'll just say they are all meaty with great suspense and reveal new aspects of our favorite characters as well as introducing fascinating new ones. And there are some really excellent twists that are terrifically imaginative. Five stars from me, and seriously, how can I get a ticket to the planet of Three Worlds? Or, at least, pre-order the next book?
Oh, and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the gorgeous cover art, which is just breathtaking in detail.
[ X-posted to Dreamwidth with