City of Stairs

The first book in the Divine Cities series is set in a world where the Continent, once ruled by six powerful gods called the Divinities, has been subjugated by Saypur, the small nation it formerly enslaved. Roughly 75 years before the story begins, the Saypuri general known as the Kaj used mysterious weaponry to kill the Divinities, causing a catastrophic reality collapse called the Blink that devastated the Continent's holiest city, Bulikov. Saypur now occupies the Continent and enforces the Worldly Regulations, laws that outlaw any public acknowledgment of the Divine.

When Dr. Efrem Pangyui, a celebrated Saypuri historian studying Continental history in Bulikov, is found murdered at the university, Shara Komayd arrives under the alias "Cultural Ambassador Thivani" to investigate. Shara is a high-ranking operative for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, niece of Minister Vinya Komayd, and great-granddaughter of the Kaj. Accompanying her is Sigrud, a towering, one-eyed man from the Dreyling nations, a seafaring people of the far north, who serves as her enforcer. Shara takes control of the embassy and discovers a coded message sewn into Pangyui's tie, tradecraft she never taught him, suggesting a deeper operation. She contacts Vinya through a forbidden miracle and grows suspicious that her aunt is hiding something about Pangyui's true mission. The decoded message leads to a safety deposit box at a Bulikov bank.

At Pangyui's ransacked office, Shara finds entry permission stubs that Polis Governor Turyin Mulaghesh traces to the Unmentionable Warehouses, a classified facility containing thousands of miraculous artifacts collected after the Great War. Pangyui was authorized to study the Warehouse's contents, meaning his scholarly mission was a cover for a deeper operation directed by Vinya. Mulaghesh steers Shara toward the Restorationists, a reactionary movement opposing Saypuri control, and identifies City Father Ernst Wiclov, a member of Bulikov's governing council, as their most prominent supporter.

Through flashbacks, the novel reveals that Shara and City Father Vohannes Votrov, leader of the New Bulikov modernization movement, were lovers at Fadhuri Academy in Ghaladesh, Saypur's capital. Their relationship ended when Shara discovered Vohannes was also sleeping with men, a desire he could not openly express in his conservative Kolkashtani culture. At a reception at Vohannes's estate, masked Restorationists attack, and Sigrud kills most of the assailants while one vanishes impossibly into an alley.

Shara interrogates a captured attacker using a philosopher's stone, a hallucinogenic drug historically used to commune with the Divine. The boy mentions the Restorationists wanted Vohannes for his steel and describes ships that fly. Then something seizes him: Shara is pulled into a vision where a powerful presence demands to be freed. The boy spontaneously combusts, which Shara recognizes as Divine possession, meaning one of the original six gods has survived.

The investigation accelerates. Vohannes, hoping Shara will use the evidence to destroy his rival Wiclov, retrieves the safety deposit box contents and provides Wiclov's financial records. A university maid reveals she was recruited by the Restorationists to copy pages from the Warehouse inventory. Wiclov's finances show he has been buying steel in small quantities, each below the threshold that would trigger a Ministry review.

Following Wiclov's trail, Shara and Sigrud discover an underground temple: the true Seat of the World, the Divinities' ancient meeting place, which sank during the Blink. Someone has been restoring the section devoted to Kolkan, the Divinity of judgment who was imprisoned by the other gods centuries ago after growing tyrannical. Shara identifies a stone door frame as half of a portal whose twin sits in the Warehouse and activates it. Inside, she trips an incendiary mine. The explosion destroys the Warehouse, and something enormous escapes from a shattered jug.

The escaped creature is Urav, a massive aquatic familiar of Kolkan that swims up the Solda River and begins killing citizens. Sigrud fights it alone on the ice. When Urav swallows him, Sigrud is immune to its supernatural torment: a scar on his palm, the mark of the Finger of Kolkan, a Divine punishment he endured in Slondheim prison, protects him. He kills the creature from within. The next morning, a newspaper reveals Shara's true identity, blowing her cover across the Continent.

Vinya strips Shara of her intelligence credentials, blaming her for the disaster, and confines her to a ceremonial diplomatic role. In defiance, Shara reads Pangyui's journal, which confirms that the Divinities did not dictate to their followers but followed them, enacting desires already formed among the mortal population. The Continentals were never ordered to enslave Saypur; the gods merely enforced what the people wished.

During weeks of enforced tedium, Shara discovers that wearing Kolkashtani clothing seeded with charms bearing Kolkan's sigil allows passage through tears in reality into Old Bulikov, a fragment of the original Divine city preserved since the Blink. Following a trail, she finds the Restorationists' secret: six steel warships designed to fly using threads from Kolkan's carpet, a miraculous rug stolen from the Warehouse, intended to bypass Saypur's navy and shell Ghaladesh from the air.

A message lures Shara to a meeting where the true mastermind reveals himself: Volka Votrov, Vohannes's older brother, thought dead for decades. Volka survived a pilgrimage to a remote monastery where he spent nearly 30 years learning ancient miracles and hearing Kolkan's voice. He has orchestrated the entire conspiracy, manipulating Wiclov and planning to free Kolkan from his glass prison in the Seat of the World. Volka kidnaps Shara and imprisons her alongside the badly beaten Vohannes.

Volka rings all six Divinity bells, raising the temple to the surface, and shatters Kolkan's prison. A nine-foot-tall robed figure emerges, but when the Restorationists fail the correct ritual greeting, it turns them to stone. Vohannes provokes the Divinity with a defiant speech rejecting Kolkashtani shame and confessing his sexuality, freeing Shara from its paralysis long enough for her to hide using a miracle of invisibility.

The Divinity begins remaking Bulikov, summoning an army of armored soldiers. Shara takes a massive overdose of philosopher's stones, gaining the ability to reshape reality: She melts the soldiers and shields the embassy with defensive barriers. She realizes the being is not Kolkan alone but a fusion of Kolkan and Jukov, two incompatible gods merged during centuries of shared imprisonment. Jukov had faked his death and hidden inside Kolkan's prison, but the confinement fused them into a single, insane entity. Sigrud crashes a commandeered flying warship into the Divinity. Shara confronts the wounded being in the wreckage; overwhelmed by conflicting identities, it begs her to end its suffering. She cuts its throat with a blade of black lead, the material the Kaj used to kill the gods, which she recovered from the temple where Jukov died.

Over 2,000 people die, though many are saved by Jukov's final act of transforming endangered citizens into starlings. Vohannes dies from the Divinity's torture. In the aftermath, Shara secretly meets the Divinity Olvos, the last surviving god, who reveals that the Kaj's mother was the daughter of Olvos and Jukov, making the Kaj half-Divine. The Komayd family carries a trace of Divine blood.

Shara confronts Vinya and reveals that Vinya ordered Pangyui's assassination because his research uncovered the Kaj's Divine parentage, meaning Vinya herself descends from the gods she helped suppress. Shara gives Vinya a choice: step down and cede control of the Ministry, or be exposed. She plans to dissolve the Worldly Regulations, declassify Continental history, and rebuild the Continent as an equal partner. She recruits Mulaghesh as her military ally and asks Sigrud to consider returning to the Dreyling lands as its lost prince. On the ship home, Shara scatters Vohannes's ashes over the sea between the two nations, then turns toward the bow, facing home for the first time in 16 years.