The Olympian Affair
7th April 2024
The second full length Cinder Spires novel and it really does feel its length. It took me two goes to read it, having a pause halfway for a holiday and two other novels.
The book does little to recap or reintroduce its world, although I’m not sure I remember much of that from the first. Instead we are thrown straight into the world and the plot. I felt that if I hadn’t recently read the novella in this series I would have been totally lost, particularly as this book follows on almost immediately and directly from the events of the novella.
It’s then a slow burn as we see a lot of politics and conversation between an array of pairings from different factions, and it’s not really until the final quarter that the action level picks up. I didn’t find it as engaging to get through as I had wanted to.
I’m not convinced at this stage that I’m going to bother to pick up a third book in this series if one comes. It wasn’t gripping enough to justify occupying so much of my limited reading time.