By Robert Jackson Bennett

Jo Fletcher Books, out now

Sancia has enough issues with trying to survive – but when she is hired to steal what turns out to be a talking key, her world is turned upside down. And so is everyone else’s around her.

I’ve made no bones about it over the past decade – I think Robert Jackson Bennett is one of the best writers in the genre at the moment, whether his stories are set in the real world (or at least adjacent to it), or in a realm that he’s created. After the Divine Cities trilogy, he’s come up with something that draws you in from the start with its worldbuilding (for a hint as to what is at its core, have a look at the piece he wrote for SFB here – I don’t intend to spoil it for you), and keeps you there with its diverse cast of characters.

At times it feels like Terry Pratchett’s Ankh-Morpork taken seriously, but then you meet a character like Clef who is a breath of fresh air, querying everything about the world he finds himself in (and thereby providing Bennett plenty of opportunity to flesh out the society) and arguing with others in a way that would make Marvin the Paranoid Android blush.

Sancia herself could easily have become the cliched “sassy teenager”, but she’s more – so much more – than this. We probably realise more about her backstory than she does herself initially, and it makes for a fascinating study in keeping the emotional beats progressing alongside the plot.

And there’s a lot going on beneath the surface. Bennett has never shied away from shining a spotlight on aspects of current society through his fiction, and there’s a lot here about the dangers of playing with things you don’t understand and hoping that because piece A slots into slot B that that’s all it was meant to do.

Bennett juggles plot, character, action sequences and horrific gore (there’s a method of execution in here that’s truly terrifying – and described so well that it’ll stick in your mind for some time to come). In his afterword, Bennett notes that this story has gone through more changes along the way than any other, but all the time has been well spent.

Verdict: A thrilling fantasy built around an incredibly clever interpretation of magic. Highly recommended. 10/10

Paul Simpson