Review of Tome of the Undergates by Sam Sykes

Sam Sykes drops us off very much in media res in Tome of the Undergates. Often I love that kind of thing—exposition is for chumps! But as with my experience with An Ember in the Ashes, perhaps trying to read this just after Desert Bus for Hope was a bad idea. Or perhaps it was having an antihero as a protagonist.

This reminds me a great deal of Best Served Cold. I can see the appeal of this book; I can see why people would enjoy it. There are definitely elements to it that I enjoyed a great deal. But the way Sykes handles the ensemble cast, combined with not feeling all that invested in this quest that they're on, means that I ultimately didn’t care much for it.

Would I come back to it in the future? Maybe. At this point, though, I want to be reading books I really want to finish, not books I think I should finish.