I picked up The Aeronaut’s Windlass again. It’s by Jim Butcher, who I have now learned also wrote the Dresden Files after reading this post! It’s a fun, cool read.

There’s almost two stories happening alongside each other. One about the cool, veteran ship captain trying to fix up his airship after the opening scene. The other about a group of young people almost out of the guards academy. I think I like all of them.

I really like the worldbuilding. Something happened to the surface of the Earth (I presume) and now humanity lives in a few giant spires, growing mana crystals to power airships to fly between them. On top of being a sucker for flying sailing ships (thanks Treasure Planet), I like how there isn’t really one exposition dump at any point about how the tech works, just context clues about why the current tech being discussed is relevant.

There are also people that talk to cats. It’s a little weird, but I like the cats enough to not be put off by it.