An excellent sequel to The Aeronaut’s Windlass. The writing was pithy, the swashes were buckled, and my beloved cats returned for more spot-on comic relief. I thought the second half of the book was stronger than the first half – once we got into the duels, things started really picking up. One of the duels has an exceptionally badass moment that I’ll be thinking about for quite some time. I also liked the “Spectral Tea,” where the ladyfolk conduct their own polite war with veiled barbs and cutting insights. That said, while I loved the cats (as always), I thought the entire Bridget / Benedict / cats storyline was superfluous to the story. I love the cats (they’re probably my favourite characters), but if you cut their whole subplot out of the book, it wouldn’t make a huge difference to the overall chain of events, which is a shame. There are some definite consequences at the end, and I’ll be interested in seeing whether Butcher picks things up in book 3 immediately after the end of this book, or if there’s a series of novellas + a time jump, as there was between the first two book. Still the Cinder Spires has been a delightful surprise, and I’ll be looking forward to the next release.