Eon ♒Windrunner♒ 's Reviews > The Aeronaut's Windlass

4.5 Stars

Humans have ceased living on the surface of the world, (which is inhabited by any number of dangerous creatures) but instead live on spires, which are described as giant towers made of Spirestone. They travel to and from these spires via airships that are steam-driven, but seem mostly happy to stay on the spire they live on, unless they are one of the many merchants or privateers who own airships and thus spend most of their time in the air or part of the spire’s airfleet and thus also airbound.

Captain Grimm is one of the owners of such a vessel - a privateer vessel named the Predator who has a bit of a run-in with a legendary enemy vessel that he cannot hope to defeat, but luckily he avoids complete destruction and is confined to Spire Albion while his ship awaits repairs. Whilst Predator is waiting in the docks, Spire Albion is attacked by Spire Aurora and as part of his response the leader of the spire, the Spirearch, convinces Captain Grimm to join a team he has assembled to complete a mission of the utmost importance in the war against their enemies. Unbeknownst to them though, an old evil is maneuvering and pulling the strings on its puppets.

Now I don’t know about you, but I’m a sucker for an assembled team with a mission.

If you’re still not convinced, let your interest be piqued.
- Steam-powered airships (untold amounts of awesomeness)
- Mentally unstable etherealists that can kill you with a thought, but are very likeable.
- Super creepy villain obsessed with politeness and a penchant for killing.
- Talking cats. (WAY cooler than you can imagine)
- Amazing battles. On ships. In the Air… You can’t jump ship.
- Silkweavers. I know they sound harmless, but NO.
- Talking cats people! Imagine the smuggest, smoothest, most arrogant bad-ass you can and then imagine that it is a ginger cat.

The book does lack in terms of worldbuilding a bit, and I found myself very confused at the start and struggling with the pace which felt slow. Luckily this improves as the story progresses, not enough in my opinion, but sufficient to get a feel for everything. I really came to love the characters as the plot unfolded and the pace picked up significantly and never seized towards the end. I could not get enough of the grim captain, Captain Grimm (yep) and also thought Rowl was marvelous. Rowl is a cat btw. The cat societies in this world are done REALLY well. Jim Butcher is clearly owned by a cat.

Another excellent story by this author even though I would not have known it was him just by reading the book. It felt fresh and exciting and I am most definitely looking forward to reading the next book in the Cinder Spires series.



Image from Priscilla Spencer's Map Store