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                        House of Open Wounds
                               - by -
                         Adrian Tchaikovsky
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    Behind the front lines of a crusade to scour the world of
    magic, the crew of a field hospital confront the horrors
    of war. A companion novel to Adrian Tchaikovsky's
    award-winning fantasy novel City of Last Chances.
    City-by-city, kingdom-by-kingdom, the Palleseen have sworn
    to...                
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 Read: 2024-09-25 | Rating: 5/5 | Pages: 608 | isbn: 1035901412
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Just stunning. Adrian Tchaikovsky at his very best.

Building on the incredible world of <em>City of Last
Chances</em>, he moves the action into the Pallesseen Sway, and
onto battlefields far and wide. The location of most of the
book is the Experimental Field Hospital -- where different
forms of magical healing are performed by various conquered
peoples who've come under the Sway. 

The thing that got me most about this book was just how funny
it was. In the midst of terrible suffering, awful moral choices
and an indifferent command, Tchaikovsky's characters are
terribly, sometimes mordantly, funny. The characterisations are
incredible, and I say that as a signed up fanboy of Shadows of
the Apt. This is better, in every way.

Complexity is here aplenty, as are examinations of morals,
motivations and hope.

I strongly recommend this book.