The Olympian Affair

Butchers steampunk world lifts off

Second in his new series, this is a rollicking fast paced adventure novel which I enjoyed in my younger years but has I think gone out of vogue except perhaps for what is described as “young adult”.He deserves to be more widely read than he already is simply for the fun of a good yarn well told.

A solid read, though perhaps not quite as good as the first, The Aeronaut's Windlass.

6/10

Kinda disappointing. I imagine someone waiting 8 years for this sequel and I'm just appalled. Half the book is people preparing for duels I found pretty uninteresting, and the character dynamics in this one are just...static? I'm not sure how to describe it. The cats are also much less charming. In general, the whole book just felt half-assed to me, which is a huge shame. The last 20% or so was really good, though.

This one took me a while to get into. It's been a really long time since the first book came out, and I don't read enough anymore to spend the time rereading. Eventually I got my bearings and I enjoyed the book overall, but not as much as the first one. Maybe if they had come out closer together I would have enjoyed it more (or if I do a reread of the series sometime). I will still pick up the next book as I'm a huge fan of Jim Butcher.

I did the audio and I thought the narrator was excellent, in particular their cat voices.

3.5 stars probably, rounded up.