Second paragraph of third chapter:

Water evaporates, the heat pushing it higher and higher until suddenly it is too high, condensing around particles of soot and ash billowed into the heavens by the blaze.

Occasionally I hit a book by a favourite author that doesn’t quite work for me, and I’m afraid this is one of those times. I’m generally a big fan of North’s writing, and I’m also a big fan of A Canticle for Leibowitz, to which this is in part a response. It’s the story of a future scholar dedicated to retrieving past knowledge in a post-apocalypse society, where rival power structures have mutually entangled espionage networks and cosmic principles are embodied.

I didn’t especially like any of the characters, but what put me off more was that although the story is mainly set in the cities and countryside of a devastated Central Europe, there is very little sense of place; the cities are interchangeable and everyone seems to speak the same language. This detachment from geography threw me right out of the narrative. Most people seem to like it much more than me. You can get it here.

A Bechdel fail, I think; mostly first-person narrative and a male protagonist. But I may have missed an exception.

This was my top unread book acquired in 2021. Next on that pile is When Voiha Wakes, by Joy Chant, which I picked up at Novacon (where I also acquired COVID).