Review: Smoke and Stone
Smoke and Stone by Michael R. Fletcher My rating: 5 of 5 stars Holy Smoke! (and Stone) was that a wild ride… Michael R. Fletcher makes his return to grimdark fantasy in fine fashion, introducing us to a fascinating new world, different from that in his brilliant Manifest Delusions series. If you enjoyed the world-building and backstabbery of that series, you’ll love this one just as much. It’s the first book in the City of Sacrifice series, set entirely in the city of Bastion, which to its inhabitants comprises the entire known world. Bastion sets on a single stone, which covers a diameter of about 250 miles. A quarter of a million people live here, separated by several walls which ring around the core, where the priests live. It’s an elaborate caste system, where the farther out one lives from the center, the more poor and numerous. Smoke and Stone takes place mostly in the Grower’s Ring, where the food for the city is harvested by, you guessed it