The Aeronaut's Windlass

Today's post is on The Aeronaut's Windlass by Jim Butcher. It is the first in his The Cinder Spires series. It is 640 pages long and is published by Roc. The cover has Captain Grimm on it looking cool. The intended reader is someone who likes steampunk, is a fan of Jim Butcher, and interesting plots. There is no foul language, no sex, and mild violence in this novel. The story is told from third person moving from one character to another every chapter. There Be Spoilers Ahead.

From the back of the book- Since time immemorial, the Spires have sheltered humanity, towering for miles over the mist-shrouded surface of the world. Within their halls, aristocratic houses have ruled for generations, developing scientific marvels, fostering trade alliances, and building fleets of airships to keep the peace.
Captain Grimm commands the merchant ship, Predator. Fiercely loyal to Spire Albion, he has taken their side in the cold war with Spire Aurora, disrupting the enemy’s shipping lines by attacking their cargo vessels. But when the Predator is severely damaged in combat, leaving captain and crew grounded, Grimm is offered a proposition from the Spirearch of Albion—to join a team of agents on a vital mission in exchange for fully restoring Predator to its fighting glory.
And even as Grimm undertakes this dangerous task, he will learn that the conflict between the Spires is merely a premonition of things to come. Humanity’s ancient enemy, silent for more than ten thousand years, has begun to stir once more. And death will follow in its wake…

Review- A fun and fast-paced steampunk story. Butcher's writing is solid for this story, with interesting characters, fun world-building, and of course spiders. If I can ever get my hands on Tolkien, I will make him pay for all the spiders in fantasy novels. Seriously. But back to the story we have a world where humans and cats live on Spires and no one goes to the surface. We have interesting magic with half-mad and mad magic users. We have noble houses and criminal guilds and kings who everyone knows are just figureheads, no really he just says around all day totally not planning for everything to wrong and how to fix it when it does. The one weakness in this book is the last airship battle. Butcher lost me on that one. I do not know why but it just bored me. Other than that a very enjoyable story and I am curious about where the story is going to go now.

I give this book a Four out of Five stars. I was given this book by ACE/Roc in exchange for an honest review.