Reviewed by: Rabid Reads. 
 I finally caved, and started listening to Jim Butcher's THE DRESDEN FILES in audio this year, so while I'm still busy playing catch-up on that series, I was excited to be able to get in on the ground floor of THE CINDER SPIRES. The humour was not along the same lines as what I've come to equate with this author, but the world-building and characters were, and two out of three ain't bad! And, in all fairness, Rowl probably made this novel 3/3 for cat people, I just can't in good conscience admit to that for fear of retaliation from my fur babies. 
 Book 1 has to be THE trickiest installment to write in my opinion because they have the huge task of making an awesome first impression while also developing the protagonists / secondaries / world enough that readers want more without reaching the critical information overload point of no return. Butcher cheated a bit by buying himself extra fleshing out time with his 640 pages, but overall he used the added length to his advantage with epic airship shoot outs, Steampunk-ish gadgets / beasties, and kickass story telling. 
 I enjoyed the alternating POVs; the separations were distinct, the locations were identified at the start of each chapter, and once I got to know the characters, it was easy to pick out which one was MC'ing just by their dialogues, and narrative styles. I bring this up because this may very well end up being one of the bigger critique points of this series; this particular style can be difficult to follow if you spread out your reading sessions, so essentially what I'm getting at is that this is not a "lunch break" kind of novel! 
 I'm assuming that Grimm is going to be the main honcho of THE CINDER SPIRES, although I'm not ruling Gwendolyn, Benedict, Bridget, Rowl, Ferus, or Folly out yet either because several of them had a comparable presence. I can also grudgingly acknowledge that the prince of the Silent Paws was right on point; the author combined a cat's indifference, God complex and snobbery into a cute package with attitude, and by the end I was THIS close to buying him his favourite dumplings. 
 Longer than your average book; however THE AERONAUT'S WINDLASS was time well spent.