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[now-serving]

City of Stairs - a book review

The world created by Robert Jackson Bennett in City of Stairs is simply put: expansive, intricate, cohesive, and absolutely fascinating. How this story (and its two sequels) has not spawned a roaring cult fandom is beyond me. The mature source material is endlessly entertaining with still so much to explore; aided by Bennet’s masterful spinning of a world overflowing with complex social commentary, political upheaval, and divine magic that fits in so naturally. I could go on, there is so much to love in Bennet’s world: the waring, conquering, rebelling, and reconquering people of the Continent and Saypur, the ravaged, husked Continental capital Bulikov—the city of stairs, and the once very real and tangible Gods of limitless power, now murdered. 

The characters inhabiting Bennet’s gritty, divine magic laden world are for the most part complex, driven, unique, and brimming with personality. Ashara (Shara) Komayd is a head-strong and ruthless detective who’s unwavering devotion to the discovery of truth and encyclopedic knowledge of the Divine fold together to form a near unstoppable brilliant force. Shara’s ability to simply outsmart enemies is balanced by her towering, door-filling hulk of a “secretary” Sigrud je Harkvaldsson. The stoic brawn to her brains, Sigrud will readily murder, eviscerate, or at the very least incapacitate anyone or anything in Shara’s way and in the next moment will provide a calm and reaffirming ear for Shara and her musings. Bennet builds his characters so carefully and consistently that I have to assume they are direct representations of real people in his life. Characters’ actions are so well justified by their personalities that I repeatedly noticed myself thinking “wow, that’s SO Sigrud”, or “that’s SO Shara”. 

Some side characters leave something to yearn for, but this is likely more a symptom of me being entirely sucked into this amazing world of the Divine Cities trilogy and wanting to know everything about everything down to every characters’ inner thoughts, the history of each city, the geography of the continent. Are there insects in this world? What kinds of animals roam the countryside? What are the oceans like? Are there other landmasses? Other people and other Gods yet to be discovered? Any fantasy detective novel that leaves the reader wondering about the resident flora and fauna a year after reading deserves some special commendations. 

The City of Stairs is brilliantly atmospheric (in part aided by fascinating excerpts of ancient texts, newspapers, and scientific journals presented at the beginning of each chapter), expertly written, with stunningly depictions of a fantastical world through the eyes of lovable and dynamic characters. I wish I could have my memory wiped just to relive the experience of exploring Bennett’s world with fresh eyes. But rereading City of Stairs several times will have to do for now.

--   An Excerpt  -- And Olvos said to them: “Why have you done this, my children? Why is the sky wreathed with smoke? Why have you made war in far places, and shed blood in strange lands?”

And they said to Her: “You blessed us as Your people, and we rejoiced, and were happy. But we found those who are not Your people, and they would not become Your people, and they were willful and ignorant of You. They would not open their ears to Your songs, or lay Your words upon their tongues. So we dashed them upon the rocks and threw down their houses and shed their blood and scattered them to the winds, and we were right to do so. For we are Your people. We carry Your blessing. We are Yours, and so we are right. Is this not what You said?”

And Olvos was silent

--BOOK OF THE RED LOTUS, PART IV, 13.51–13.59

[now-serving]

Monopoly vs. Monopsony

Most everyone is familiar with the concept of a monopoly: a single entity controls an aspect of the market such that consumers can only ever buy from that entity. This obviously would tend to cause issues as the single seller can then set the sale price of goods to unreasonable amounts, circumventing the consumer market’s ability to self-correct via basic supply and demand. While we like to think the term monopoly can apply to any large company, the truth is that it is in fact very rare for a true monopoly to exist. People will often site Google, the De Beers diamond corp, Pacific Gas & Electric as examples of monopolies, but even these do not satisfy all monopolistic requirements (though there are strong arguments to be made that companies like Alphabet/Google are imposing enough to stifle competition through the continued acquisition of competitors; a separate issue from that of monopolies).

A monopsony on the other-hand is much more common and arguably has a more significant impact on communities than the threat of monopolies. A monopsony exists when there is a single buyer in a region, meaning the public has only a single entity to which they can sell to. In the prototypical case: a small community is almost entirely employed by the same company. In this case, the consumers would be selling their labor to the company in exchange for wages, but with only one company buying that labor, the company is able to set a buy-price (wage) to unreasonably low levels with little risk of retaliation from the public or potential loss of laborers. After all, if the company is operating in a poor isolated community, the public will necessarily become dependent on the single stream of revenue. Monopsonies are most often found in rural communities, where employment options are already limited. Their existence and predatory effects on rural America is one of the stronger arguments I’ve heard for the existence of a federally imposed minimum wage.

A fair warning: while invoking knowledge of monopsonies is a good argument for the existence of a minimum wage, it alone is not a good nor a complete argument for a $15 minimum wage. My hope is to use this information to combat the conservative rhetoric that NO minimum wage is actually a good idea: that market forces will always force wages to settle to what workers are willing to receive, and that it’s on the worker’s heads to refuse to accept low wages (it may be that I misunderstand the conservative argument here, but I think it’s funny that they seem to be advocating for the existence of strong unions lol). 

[now-serving]

A letter to our main character

Mild spoilers?

Every morning when I step out and you’re asleep behind me, I find a little piece of sadness in me. I carry it in my chest down Voyager Road… Every step I take, it grows. By the time I reach the fuel station it has filled me entirely. I step on the light rail and look back, sparks fall from the bow collector. I know it will be like this until late afternoon, when I get off the 42 — and walk back to you. You, you… Every step I take will get lighter. It almost makes me run! Sometimes I do. I can’t believe I met you. I can’t believe the happiness I feel with you. You have a vast, vast soul and I will always, always, always come back to it.

[now-serving]

Loving Disco Elysium so far. I haven’t really played an rpg before, and am approaching this game perhaps a bit naively in that I am trying model my character’s behavior to be identical to mine. Although I am not conforming to what I would expect is the typical route of designing a “better version of one’s self” to RP as, it’s in fact surprisingly difficult to restrain my character from being more reckless and bombastic than I normally would be. I’m enjoying the challenge. I hope to provide periodic updates as I progress and explore Revachol (as spoiler-free as possible of course).