Second paragraph of third chapter:

Someone lifted Serapio’s head, and liquid touched his lips.

In personal news, I am taking six weeks off work, starting today, a kind of mini-sabbatical (I’ve been at my current job for almost exactly ten years) and one of my resolutions is to spend less effort on books that don’t manage to grab me in the first 100 pages or so. This is one of those books, sadly; a perfectly decent fantasy novel, middle book of a trilogy, world based on pre-1492 Americas, but the setting and characters just didn’t quite engage me enough to keep reading. One of the books that I had put aside from last year’s Clarke submissions list because it clearly wasn’t science fiction but also clearly wasn’t bad. But it just wasn’t for me. You can get it here.

This was my top unread book by a writer of colour. Next on that pile is Glory, by NoViolet Bulawayo.