My introduction to Jum Butcher was The Aeronaut’s Windlass (Cinder Spires 1) published in 2015 (the publication date will matter in a minute). It’s a sort of steampunk/fantasy/speculative adventure; I really enjoyed the characters (including the talking cats), world, and general story. I checked out his main series, the Dresden Files, but got tired of that after a few volumes. I have limited tolerance for the kind of story where things just keep going from bad to worse, and often the personal drama is avoidable. Anyways, eventually, The Cinder Spires 2, The Olympian Affair came out, in 2023. Per the afterward, the author had been thinking about giving up the series after personal and professional challenges (including the pandemic) but was inspired by fans at cons, who were invested, to continue the series. He now promises at least a few more volumes. I shall follow this one.
Considering that there was at least a 5-year lag between installments for me, there was definitely some things that I had to re-recognize, but overall, it was easy enough to get into this one. Captain Grimm and his crew are sent off to a political summit that’s nominally about trade but probably about the threat of war that’s been coming since the last installment which apparently was about two years ago in this timeline. Grimm and Bayard are managing their ships and personal lives; Bridget, Rowl (somehow I’d missed he a was an orange), and Benedict are joined by newcomer Fenli the kitten as they play their part in working out the crisis/mystery of what happened to wipe out an entire colony; Spire Aurora is still up to no good, which means that Madam Cavendish is back; and Abigail, Duchess Hinton gest a lot more page time playing politics in the polite noble open. There’s one more section to fold into things, and that’s the Auroran commander Colonel Espira who finds himself trying to balance personal values with what he’s been commanded to do. There’s a lot of politics, but it manages to be interesting, a couple of duels, etherialists doing strange things strangely, some air ship battles, personal concerns, and a Last of Us kind of situation that develops on one ship.
Generally, things are pretty consistently moving along, there’s some hints at interesting historical backstory, but the final cliff-hanger such a as it is very clearly hints at the Ancient Evil Release/Arising trope. Really, there’s multiple cliff-hanger endings for various groups, particularly for Gwen who get very little attention as a character in this story. She’s basically there as Grimm’s XO and learning ship commanding things. She’s definitely been set up for at least something for the first part of an eventual book 3. Abigail’s cliffhanger is self-inflicted, she knows it, but interestingly she acknowledges it. Fenli and Rowl together had definitely better be back because the two of them together really give the whole Cat culture more visibility, and they are such cats about pretty much everything. If you know cats in reality, the Cats in this world will both amuse and aggravate the heck out of you because they are realistically what you can imagine your cats would be like could humans and kitties communicate more freely.