Glimmers of greatness, and then the old demon (Kinsale’s fetishistic obsession with an imaginary ‘orient’) rears its ugly little head. Quickly learning that For My Lady’s Heart +Flowers from the Storm were flukes and the rest of her catalogue is wildly unmemorable.

Serviceable as a mystery. The setting never felt real or alive, for all it was unique, because the writing was unpolished. In many ways, this felt like a first/second draft. I bet the worldbuilding doc and plot outline was very extensive, but the prose served only as a vehicle to speed us through the details, and not an anchor. Multiple times, I caught sloppy sentence constructions and repeated verbiage (can’t give examples because audiobook!) which confused me because Bennett’s earlier work was more careful about such things. Even the first three chapters of THIS book was more careful about construction, detail, and atmosphere. Which means that Bennet is capable, but just writing too quickly to give that level of sheen to everything else.

None of the characters stand out to me, especially Din. The self-flagellation over his dyslexia honestly fried me lmao. I can tell there were supposed to be more layers (there’s a disconcerting early scene of him displaying rage issues that never ever crops up again??) but it’s forgotten in the mad rush of publication schedule—oh, I mean, uh, our murder mystery.

The Watson-Holmes style bond between him and Ana had no tension, no buddy-cop style quipping, no real displays of affection or camaraderie. Ana as a character has no real heat to her either. Her actions are so painfully stagey, the burlesque of a wink, that instead of coming across strange and unsettling, she’s just flatly silly. I see the Sherlock inspiration (the Benedict adaption in particular, with all its “get out I need to go to my mind palace” idiosyncrasies. My men Bennet is NOT reading enough and it shows) but it never lands.

Bennet similarly tries to add tension to the slow-crawling plot by laying the murder mystery over the looming threat of a Leviathian encroaching on the walls, but it’s done so artlessly. There is never, ever a real consequence of the Leviathans presence to the investigation. If shit ever does get crazy, Bennet retreats into the easier-to-write mundanities of evacuation logistics and cordoning street traffic, and it is then business as usual again. The sea monster is set dressing, with all the terror factor of a cardboard stand of Harry Styles left forgotten in a teenager’s bedroom. At the climax, where all this panic and lolly gagging should have paid off, we get a “guys it’s here!!!!!” And then, once again, a hilarious rout description of slightly disorderly evac 😭 Din even catches a glimpse of the creature, but our writer must have been running out of time, because it’s the most banal description in the world.

This might have been a good movie. You can tell that Bennet watches a lot of movies and shows, not just from the Pacific Rim/Attack on Titans/Sherlock inspiration—but because his prose feels like a script, pointing things out the way a camera pans, ignoring the unique tools that a writer has at their disposal.

Maybe I’m just being a hater—this book is pretty beloved in fantasy spaces rn, so your mileage could very much vary. If sanderson’s crab-based worldbuilding appealed to u, this will absolutely knock ur socks off.