Andrew Adam

My god, the *Lore* within this book. Never have I been more grateful for a glossary and Dramatis Personae at the front (to discover it after reading would have been infuriating, given how much back-and-forth checking of character names I ended up doing).

All of which is to say, an excellent novel, but one that demands your attention in order to understand what's going on. The narrative is passed like a baton between a vast cast of characters from one chapter to the next; many things are implied but never stated outright; other terms are picked up from context (I enjoyed Siblingry as the in-universe equivalent of a union); and new lore is dropped in regularly and without ceremony (yes, there are demons; yes, there are Infernal Realms, keep up).

I was given the third book in the series by the publisher, decided I needed to read the first two first, and then set it aside for maybe three months because two chapters were enough to confirm I didn't have the mental capacity to keep up. Once I was ready (and got the nudge from my extremely patient library that their limits were about to be reached), I devoured it. But I might read something lighter before moving onto books two and three.

As always, I greatly benefited from the online Annotated Pratchett - many of the music jokes slipped by me on first reading, along with all the Blues Brothers references. I *loved* the joke about the Klatchian Foreign Legion.

Just a delight. Soul affirming and hopeful, the world needs more of this!