The City Above and Below: Song of the Weaver: Book One

by Matthew Nesheim

It's their last stand at the beginning of the end ...


Delea and Fel Etain are working as caretakers of a refugee camp near the
capital city, Sindorum. Their wards are refugees of a long and painful war that
their father, the Duathic King, is about to lose. When the enemy Coalition
arrives to destroy the city and their father's remaining forces, their mother, the
Queen, launches a daring plan to spirit Delea and Fel away with a cadre of
loyal bodyguards in the hope they might escape.
In the dark of the night, only hours before they're to leave, Fel is visited by
an ancient specter, an Onier, who tells her that her father has travelled below the
city and through a dark portal in search of a terrible weapon to defeat his foes.
He has crossed into the Other, an alternate reality that lies parallel to their own.
However, as the Onier explains, her father is in grave danger and desperately
needs her help. Fel carries this secret with her as she and Delea flee the refugee
camp. When their escape doesn't go as planned, the Etain sisters find themselves
trapped in a war zone with enemies on all sides.
Unknown to anyone, the two sisters are also being hunted by a professional killer ...
Par Riordan is a "Taker," a 200-year-old cybernetic assassin assisted by his
symbiotic "Shade." Employed by a shadowy political cabal, Par hunts, spies, and
kills for them in the hope that they will find a cure for his terminally ill son.
After a job where he's asked to kill an old friend, Par is summoned by his masters
for a new and dangerous assignment: Travel to the war-ridden planet of Arc to
kidnap or kill every member of the Etain royal family.
Soldiers, spies, and wayward sisters, they all meet at The City Above and Below ...

436 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2018

Reviews

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

An weary assassin. A refugee princess. An ambitious military officer. Three disparate characters with three distinct stories get braided together into one suspenseful, thrilling whole. This book reminded me of some of Larry Niven's books, with great attention to detail and complex worldbuilding. Looking forward to book two!

[Jill Nesheim · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great blend of SciFi and fantasy. Character development and plot lines are intriguing. Who is/are the good guys and bad guys? At this point I like them all because you see their perspectives and stories. Can't wait for more in this series.

[Sham Kumar Monger]

Captivating novel

[Shera · Rating 5 out of 5]

A captivating read filled with mystery and suspense. I loved getting to know the characters and entering their worlds of danger and intrigue. This was a creative tale that is still reeling in my mind. I'm very excited for the next book in this series and cannot wait to jump back in.

[Alex Murphy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This popped up on my suggested reads, and after a quick look at what the story was, I added it to my 'to read list’ and got it for Christmas.
I was looking forward to reading this; a fantastical looking science fiction story, that in the blurb seemed to have seemingly fantasy ideas mixed in with science fiction ones and I’ve been looking for a good sci-fi story after reading a few duds recently. So was this as good as I hoped?

Unfortunately no. While holding promise of a good story, it's hidden behind a roster of a thousand characters that never interconnect, a world (or worlds) that's gets nothing in terms of explanation and a sprawling plot where it looks like everything will be revealed in the next two books in the series at least.

There's a war entering its final conclusion, the capital city Sindorum of planet Arc is under siege from the ground, air and space by the massive forces of the Coalition.
King Teuem Etain is apparently leading his remaining forces hidden in the capital with plans to halt the invasion. His wife and two daughters, Queen Anyse and Princess’ Delea and Fel are in the refugee camp just outside the city.
As the final assault begins, forces both from the Coalition and beyond become intertwined. An assassin armed with nano machines; a space fighter plot; an army lieutenant, along with the Royal family get caught up with the King's secret; a last chance plan to save his kingdom; to cross over to The Other, a mystical alternate reality to find something that will turn the balance to his favour.

With all these elements, I was sure of getting something that would be an excellent read.
What I got?
A huge jumble of characters doing stuff that seems unrelated to each other with a world that is only told about in small titbits of information lightly scattered through the book and a parallel world that has barely any explanation to it at all.
Firstly the characters. I've read Dune. And The Song of Ice and Fire. I can manage a large ensemble cast. But in those books, you felt that each character even if only a small role was part of a larger story. Here there are way too many characters with little to no story that connects then together. I mean this is the list of point of view characters;
Delea – eldest Princess of Arc
Fel – the younger Princess
Par – a 200 year old nanobot assisted assassin
Taylor – a space fighter pilot for the Coalition
Atticus – a army lieutenant for the Coalition about to attack the capital
Ortho – a army Intel analyst for the Coalition
Now looking at that, might not seem many. But except for the sisters none of the others interact with each other over the whole book, except with Par linking up with Delea at the very end. Not only do they not come into contact with each other, their individual plots don't cross over either. Plus the fact that each character had at least another four secondary characters along with them it just seemed crowded and hard to remember every one of them. Most of the story seems pivoted around the royal sisters, the other characters seen to be having side stories to the main one. Also seeing the characters here I noticed that many seem to be on the Coalition's side. Not sure if this means the story leaned too heavily on the more conventional military side of the Coalition which perhaps the author found easier to write. But a lot of time is used up by Taylor, Atticus and Ortho doing military operations that by the end seem little if at all to affect the main plot.

So what is the plot with all these characters? Hmm. Ok. With an inter planetary invasion underway and Sindorum the last holdout city; Fel, the youngest Princess, can see beings from some sort of alternate dimension, that no one else can see. One of these 'creatures', the Onier, a creepy bird/bat thing, tells her that her father, the King, has crossed over to this other world to find some mysterious power to defeat the Coalition. As the attack on the capital begins, Queen Anyse, Delea, Fel and a large entourage of bodyguards attempt to get to an evacuation point, but are shot down, and forced to go on the run through the bombarded capital to evade the Coalition forces hunting for them. As they attempt to reach the evacuation ship, the daughters are separated from their mother. As Delea and Fel with their bodyguards try to avoid capture, Fel is secretly crossing over to this world looking for her father. What’s this world like? A bit weird but nothing really strange. What lives there? The Onier and some creepy versions of Del that chase her? What is this world? Not explained. Why are there lots of versions of Del chasing her in the Other? Again, not explained. Is this world secret? Do other people know of it? Why can only Del and her father travel there and talk to the beings from there? Well actually... No nothing. See the pattern. Perhaps you'd think the other characters will bring more understanding to the book? Par, an assassin in a symbiotic link with his 'Shade’, a nanobot cluster, who has been given a mission by some mysterious group to kill or capture the Royal family. Who is this group, as it isn't the Coalition? Never find out. Why would they want this? Don't find out. Do they know about this other world? Does not get mentioned. Taylor, a squadron leader of space fighter planes. From a political elite family, having a forbidden relationship with an army officer. Is this important here? No not really. Does it link up with the other stories? No. How about Atticus, an army officer in the thick of the fighting. In leading attack on the city, you see Atticus lead his men into battle. His father is a former general and now a high-ranking diplomat. It's this relevant? No, none that I could see. Lastly, we have Ortho, an army Intel analyst who gets stuck with several dirty jobs, then thrown into the frontline by acting as communication tech for Atticus' father as he inspects the state of the war. Do any of these know or have hints of what the king is planning or searching this alternate dimension for? Simply…No, none whatsoever. Throw in the large collection of support characters who also don't link into this main storyline. None of these big issues are explained our even given hints or clues onto what's happening.
This applies to loads of other stuff as well. Like at first, I thought there was different species of aliens, lazy imaginative aliens that all looked human except for being green or 8 foot tall. But actually, they are just humans that have been genetically modified. Is this the future or a Star Wars 'long time ago galaxy far away’ deal? I like stories that don't have to dump a truck load of exposition and let you make your own conclusions, but this book doesn't give you any breadcrumbs to do even that.

Were there any positives? Well yes. While there were too many characters that served little to no point purpose to the main plotline they are mostly written well. While it didn't grab me from the start, it did grow on me as I continued to read it. The writing of the more military angle was good, and probably due to the fact the author was formally a soldier (perhaps he finds it easier writing these, and might explain why there are so many military characters that don't really serve a purpose). While the writing is decent, the characters are never really expanded on. They are quite simple, like Del being a precocious, head strong child; Atticus is an officer who cares for his men and had a legacy to live up to. Other than stuff like this, there's little in terms of characterization. While the book flowed well enough, after about two thirds read, I guessed nothing was going to be revealed so it seemed to drag a bit.

Was this a bad book? I’d say no. A bit infuriating but bad is too harsh. I enjoyed reading parts of this book and while there wasn’t really anything that seemed original, other than this 'Other' world which we got no information about.

While I knew this was the first in a series, giving no explanation to large important parts of what will definitely be the main thrust of these books is a real misstep that nearly puts me off this book completely. Leaving mysteries for future books, yes. Giving nothing in this one, I can see people being frustrated enough to leave the following books a miss.

I think while I might return to this series, it won't be one I will be on the lookout for and desperate to get, and after looking forward to reading this that's a shame.

[Espai]

Trop de personnages à mon goût. Alors qu'on se familiarise avec trois d'entre eux dans les soixante premières pages, dont deux avec lesquelles j'avais bien accroché (Par, un mystérieux assassin et Fel, une jeune fille communiquant avec un autre monde), on reçoit ensuite d'un coup le POV de trois nouveaux qui ne m'intéressaient pas (trois militaires sans lien avec nos trois premiers POV). Passant la centième page sans retour à Par ni à Fel, j'ai abandonné.

[NoNo JoJo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Preface: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book for 95% of it, and was going to give it 4.5 stars at least - but then we came to the ending, or lack thereof. As another reviewer has stated, this is clearly supposed to start off a series, but it falls prey to the same problem a lot of them do - it is not a complete novel on its own. None of the plotlines introduced in this novel have resolutions. They simply stop, pretty much all on cliffhangers. There are no real character arcs, no questions answered, none of that.

Again, this is largely because this is the beginning of a series, but the first novel in a series should really be capable of standing on its own in some way, even if it's just the resolution of some piece of the plot or character threads and unfortunately this one does not. We do not find out Ioma's motivation, the hunchback guy's (I forgot his name) secrets, why the war is being fought, what the heck is released in the end, what the Queen knew, etc. etc. The author really needed to conclude /something/ in order for this to feel like a complete experience in some way.

All that aside, this was a fun read, albeit long. The cast is varied, but strong in their characterization, and refreshingly different from each other. There are some that are more interesting to read about than others (Delea was particularly weak, and Taylor was underutilized), but overall I was very pleased. The plot is also interesting, in that it's so varied - some of it is almost pure fantasy (Fel) whereas a lot of it is military-focused (Atticus, Taylor, and Ortho). I was really interested in the Otherworld that Fel visited, and the creatures there, though it was a little hard to follow at times. The touches of religion and myth also felt very fantasy-esque and added some nice flavor, as did the setting the princesses start off in, which is just a Civil War-esque military camp for the wounded.

The rest of the story is technically sci-fi, but feels more out-of-time than the sleek sci-fi I'm used to, which was nice. In some ways, though, it's kinda strange to be so far in the future without feeling futuristic, and I hope we get an explanation for why the army is made up of mostly squishy humans using fairly antiquated weapons (tanks, bullets, fighter ships that are pretty much just fancy jets). I think it's largely just the writer writing what he knows (he served in the military, and it shows, in a good way) but there should be an in-universe explanation for mankind being willing to sacrifice humans when they could just throw robots at the problem.

Another small, related complaint I had was the huge turnover in C-list characters. Sooo many of them die (seriously, fatalities among non-main characters is like 75% or something) that it became difficult to keep track of them, or care when they were introduced, since you knew they were just going to bite it at some point. A few deaths are used as motivators (side note, it was pretty interesting to be rooting for two sides of the same conflict, like the bit where Atticus is pursuing the princesses) but mostly the characters that die are just fodder for realism/shock value (again, why are we sacrificing people when robots would do??).

Overall, I enjoyed this book. It had strong characters and a unique, genre-blending premise that I enjoyed. However, the ending really left me wanting more, and not necessarily in a good way. You might want to wait on this util the other books are released.

[Victoria Nuzzolillo · Rating 2 out of 5]

No ending

All military all the time and 1960’s military at that. I mean it’s not Earth but it is 2388 and the top brass is still Printing out orders? Seems like the author just couldn’t be bothered to create any interesting new technology. Lazy plot device is a clueless, little girl who misses her daddy and will follow fairies to help him win the war. Easy enough to guess how that’s going to go for her. All that is annoying enough but there is No Ending At All! Just a not-very-compelling “hook” for the next book. I won’t be reading it.