Rindis.com

Doing a story that hops back and forth between two distinct storylines is difficult. It’s done quite well here.

There’s a lot of very deliberate parallels (in fact, this is brought up inside the novel), which help strengthen the structure. We have a privileged female character who goes slumming with her two best lower-class friends.

In the primary arc, this is in current-day Calimshan, where our lead is the daughter of a merchant house, and she is not planning on taking over the family business of dealing in slaves. The trio is very much a set of low-level adventurers, and there is a lot good old-fashioned swords and sorcery feel going on in these parts.

The other part happens thousands of years ago, centering on an extremely spoiled princess of the now-vanished city-state of Cursrah. One of the strong points of the book is that it shows just how spoiled and petty Amenstar is, and yet she is a sympathetic character.

Lore-wise, this is a great dive into the history of Calimshan, which was early established as a region where genies had once ruled, and most of the population still has some of their blood in them. Even by this point, the big ruling genies, including the great Calim himself, are gone, but many of the lesser ones remain, bound to service.

Of course, the two plots intersect because our modern trio stumble across the long-lost ruins of Cursrah, and we end up dealing with the aftermath of its fall….

Its not truly great, but it is well structured, and uses the structure well, and really delivers on mood and feel in important places, so I certainly recommend it.