Clever, gripping, and astonishingly original! These books are set in a world similar to our present day, except that gods are real, and magic works, and as a result technology never developed the same way as ours. Cultures are obviously different, too, and place names also. However, the descriptions of gods and people in various places give clues, and I had a lot of fun trying to map the places named in the books onto their real-world correspondences.

The series doesn't follow a linear chronology (the number in the title gives its internal order), so it's easy to think when reading a chronologically earlier book that you know where things are going, because you've already seen some later consequences of the events in progress. I at least was often wrong.

These five books together would probably be more than 800 paperback pages, maybe as many as a thousand. That sounds like a slog, but it was a real treat, and I ripped right through. There is a sixth book coming out in 2017, and I'm torn between reading it as soon as it's released, or waiting for the whole next five—I suspect I'll end up doing both!

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Terribly accessible with more to say than I would have thought on the constructions power can take, and the relationship of the powerful to the powerless. I read them in plot order (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) not published order. ( )

Books 3,2,5,1,4 which comprise a pair of duologies (each set in a city) and a standalone all set in the same world. Although the author advises reading in the published order above, the ordering seems very strange when you read the son's story before the father's, and I would go with a chronological order making more sense.

The world is quite fun. It's supposed to be a reflection of this one, and inspire a reflection on how to make it more fair/just/ethical for the majority rather than just the rich powerful and wealthy. As usual the best answer is 'don't start from here' I'm not sure any direct parallels are supposed to be drawn. 'Here' in this case is a few decades (it varies between the stories) after the magicians and the gods had a world war regarding theology. The magicians won, and became Lawyers - arbitrating the transactions of soulstuff between a god and their believers as 'miracles' occur in response to prayer. And in return the magician-cum-lawyers found the secrets of death itself, and so be necromancers to boot. Most people of course don't care, they just want their city heated from whatever source, and a stable price for the vegetables.

Over the book we follow a few who do care - lawyers who seek justice not just consequences and priests who mourn the loss of their gods. The plots interweave a bit, with book 5 being the odd one out. There is more written in the world though so I suspect it ties together even further one. The stories are as you might expect all character driven between a few heros of various backgrounds. The world building is suitably loose, and it's not quite apparent what keeps the various powers in check, mostly it would seem it's the actions of the heroes choosing not to become the tyrants they're facing. It's fun, fairly fast paced, not too detailed, but not bland either. Enjoyable reading - although probably not all 5 in succession. ( )