City of Bones

Martha Wells has done it again. CITY OF BONES is very reminiscent of vintage Leigh Brackett--the hard-boiled hero,plucky heroine, exotic locale, menace lurking around every corner--but with her own unique flavor. Like her great first novel, ELEMENT OF FIRE, this is hard to put down.

A thoroughly enjoyable, page turner, with a unique atmosphere that somehow reminded me of the excitement I felt when as a youngster I first discovered the Arabian Nights. The book is unique, quite unlike any other sf book with a detailed development of a striated society with its concomitant problems and injustices. Far more focus on characters and their interrelationships than most sf books. I could not put this book down once I started it. I look forward to more really original imaginative works from this talented author.

Martha Wells does a wonderful job of shifting the typical/boring setting of fantasy novels to a massive isolated city of harsh social distinctions, and a history that is largely unknown due to a holocaust on this as yet unexplored world. Wonderful characters. Wells even graced my sci-fi lit class here at Texas A & M. She's quite impressive as an artist. I can't wait for the sequel to this novel and a chance to see more of this world that's hinted at but never explored. :) :)

The story of a thief trying to survive in a citywhere everyone sees him as a non-human with morevalue dead than alive.An exciting story with great descriptions ofthis new fantasy world.

There are no elves or dwarves here; no naive adolescent heroes who realize long after the reader does that _they_ are destined to fulfill some prophecy. Instead, Ms. Wells gives us a gritty, fully-textured world uniquely her own and a refreshingly intelligent pair of protagonists caught up in a plot that has NOT been done a hundred times over.In a household of readers that demand the very best in fantasy, City of Bones was passed from person-to-person and read cover-to-cover by all of us