![]() ![]() Dangerously volatile, magical, and lighter-than-air, selium is mined from the volcanic caves and caverns around the desert oasis of Aransa. ![]() It's an ambitious MacGuffin, and I worried at times that O'Keefe was spreading it too thin, but it works. ![]() What's more, O'Keefe makes smart use of it, especially in exploring how people wrest luxury from barren despair.Īt the core of the story is a mysterious element known as selium, around which the entire novel revolves. It's a place ripe for intrigue, and its role in the politics of the world is almost diametrically opposed to its role in the economy. Cut off from the rest of the world by the sands of the Scorched Earth, it's also separated from the selium mines by the volcanic glass of the Black Wash. Here is a port town situated in the middle of an inhospitable, inaccessible desert oasis. The city of Asana, it is one of the more imaginative places I've come across in fantasy. O'Keefe delivers on that fun, and does so with a great degree of characterization and world building than I expected. It sounded like a lot of fun, and that was exactly what I wanted to kick off the new year. ![]() With a promise of fantasy con artists, a desert oasis, an exiled commodore, a murderous doppel, and a stolen airship, I knew I had to give Steal the Sky a read. ![]()
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