Ship of Smoke and Steel

Executive Summary: A bit of a slow start, but overall really good. Nearly as good as his Shadow Campaign series. 4.5 Stars.Audiobook: I believe this is the first book I've listened to by Catherine Ho. She does a good job. She does a few voices that add that little something extra that I've come to expect from a good audio book these days. Definitely worth doing in audio..Full ReviewIf you haven't read Mr. Wexler's [b:Shadow Campaign series 15810910 The Thousand Names (The Shadow Campaigns, #1) Django Wexler https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1355441268s/15810910.jpg 21536059], you should stop reading this right now and read that instead. Go ahead, I'll wait. Trust me, it will be worth it.Wow, you're a fast reader! See. I told you it would be worth it!So anyways, I really love that series and I've been recommending it for years. When this series was announced I was a bit disappointed. It seems like the market appeal for “young adult” was too much to avoid. I worried this book would have all the trappings that leaves most YA books pretty unappealing to me.Then again I liked his Shadow Campaign series so much that I picked up his Middle Grade series [b:The Forbidden Library 17987501 The Forbidden Library (The Forbidden Library, #1) Django Wexler https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1372045701s/17987501.jpg 25223481] and ended up liking that quite a bit too, even though I'm not the target audience.Early on I was struggling a bit with the book. I found Isoka to be unlikeable. This was by intent, but she felt like another cookie-cutter anti-hero. However my initial impressions were misplaced and do a disservice to Mr. Wexler's character development. Mr. Wexler has written Isoka to be complex. There are times when I like her, and times when I don't, but I came to understand her more as the book went on.This was not the case with Meroe however. I loved her pretty much from the first time we meet her, and for me she's the real star of the show. Yeah Isoka is a badass Jedi-like fighter, but Meroe is a delight.The world building for this book is also excellent. I love me a good magic system and this one intrigues me. I don't envy the job of fantasy writers trying to come up with something that doesn't seem too derivative and is still appealing to readers at the same time. I have a lot of questions about the nature of magic in this world, especially after some of the developments near the end of the book.I will say this book is still YA for a reason, and I might have liked it a touch better if it weren't, but it probably starts out even stronger than [b:The Thousand Names 15810910 The Thousand Names (The Shadow Campaigns, #1) Django Wexler https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1355441268s/15810910.jpg 21536059] did, at least once the main plot gets going.I'm eagerly looking forward to the next book and Mr. Wexler continues to be one of the best fantasy writers I enjoy that seems to still be under the radar to many mainstream fantasy readers. Maybe this book will have the broader appeal that is lacking in [b:The Thousand Names 15810910 The Thousand Names (The Shadow Campaigns, #1) Django Wexler https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1355441268s/15810910.jpg 21536059] due to the heavy military action. I'll be curious to see if he can match the level of political intrigue of his Shadow Campaign books that turned that series from one I enjoyed to one I loved. Time will tell.