The City Stained Red

By: Sam Sykes

Narrated by: David DeSantos

Step up to the gates.

After years in the wilds, Lenk and his companions have come to the city that serves as the world's beating heart.

The great charnel house where men die surer than any wilderness. They've come to claim payment for creatures slain, blood spilled at the behest of a powerful holy man.

And Lenk has come to lay down his sword for good.

But this is no place to escape demons.

Critic reviews

"Action fantasy with soul-albeit a small, dirty, funny soul."—Brent Weeks

"Insouciant, unrepentant and irrepressible adventurers in a powder keg of a city. And that's just how the story begins."—Robin Hobb

"Sykes has put the fun back in fantasy with fantastical creatures and a lovable crew of malcontents. The City Stained Red is like David Eddings meets Conan the Barbarian."—Brian McClellan, author of Promise of Blood

"Sam Sykes continues to reinvent the fantasy adventuring party in a vibrant world of rude magic and good intentions gone bad. Bold and exuberant, never cynical, Sykes fights the good fight on behalf of rich fantasy that nonetheless refuses to apologize for being kick-ass fun."—Scott Lynch

"Playful language, distinctly drawn characters, and a cavalcade of action."—SF Signal

"An entertaining blend of classic adventure and inventive inspiration."—Juliet E. McKenna, author of The Thief's Gamble

"Excitement, vivacity, and sly wit... simply impossible not to enjoy."—RT Book Reviews (4.5 Stars)

"This brash, prolific wordsmith has a natural eloquence that grabbed my attention and refused to let go."—Locus

superb start to a fantasy series

i enjoy the more modern style of characters as they interact and speak with each other. This isn't Tolkien. This is Mickey Spillane playing Dungeons and Dragons.

Witty, trope turning book. Need more from Sykes!

An awesome first book in a series, I wish there were more audiobooks from Sykes!

Narrator does a great job of presenting Sykes unique witty writing in a way that flows very well.

This series takes some fantasy tropes and turns them up on their head - a great thing for a genre that can become saturated with predictability.

Moments of laughter, confusion (the good kind), action, and sadness all happen organically, leaving you wanting more. definitely worth a listen.

Disappointing

Given how enthusiastic Sykes' fans on Twitter are, I expected far better. Perhaps if you have a PhD in maths or physics this would be entertaining but I have neither and found it altertantely dull, waiting to get through the maths, and pretentious.

Chaos and Characters

The City Stained Red is a fantasy novel, but only in an aesthetic sense. Sure, there's magic, monsters, demons, and swordfights, but the author has chosen to subvert standard fantasy storytelling tropes like heavy exposition, heroic protagonists, or even a clear division between good and evil. These subversions all feed perfectly into the central theme of the novel: chaos. The world of The City Stained Red is dirty, disorderly, and cruel; and the protagonists (I hesitate to call them “the good guys”) are not here to fix it.

The story opens in medias res (kind of), so instead of learning about the protagonists via exposition, their characters are revealed through their actions and interaction with each other and the world. Each has a unique way of coping with the immense chaos of the setting, so any reader will be able to identify well with at least one of them: whether the reader would just want to leave the chaos behind, try to find personal connection in the chaos, try to help others in the chaos, be at home in the chaos, look down on the chaos through a lens of simple axiomatic truths, or try to control the chaos by (literally) burning it all down.

The structure of the story eschews standard fantasy arcs like redemption or ordained quests, instead choosing to follow this scenario to fruition: what if six uniquely powerful people with various levels of decision-making skills entered a city like Jerusalem at the peak of Roman occupation? “Powder keg” is an understatement. The protagonists are broken people in a broken world, so of course their stories can come across as dirty and disjointed. One character is revealed to be a terrible (almost vile) human being, but instead of being given a chance for redemption, his arc completes when he realizes and accepts that he is a monster.

I do not want to leave the impression that this book is overall dower or dreary; it is actually a very fun read. The author often portrays the most chaotic moments as whacky hijinks; the dialogue and descriptions are freckled with wit and hilarious analogies. David DeSantos’ performance is fantastic: despite the large number of main characters, he is able to make each voice instantly recognizable and characteristically appropriate. Bravo! I sincerely hope that Audible commissions his performance for the other novels in this series.

If you enjoy fantasy novels, read this book. If you enjoy wit and humor, read this book. If you are in the mood for something unusual, read this book.

Awesome

Fantastic world building, coupled with plenty of high paced action. This book reminded me a lot of a game of D&D.