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Reviewed by Jamie Michele for Readers' Favorite
The Creeping Darkness of Janaidar by Robert D. Holland begins in a hidden underground city called The Sleeping City, where an ancient dragon named YuLong wakes up the instant YunFei, the ruler he has been mentally linked to for thousands of years, dies. He expects to find her killer inside the city, but instead discovers that her body was destroyed by a weapon controlled by the WuShi, an unseen intelligence that operates through the city’s water systems. As YuLong weakens and realizes he cannot continue, he passes his knowledge and power to Elijah, a human taken from another world and altered into a living interface with the city’s machines. Now, Elijah must take control of a vast, inactive defense system built for planetary war, while the same hidden force that killed YunFei remains active and a hostile warship begins moving into position above the world.
Robert D. Holland’s The Creeping Darkness of Janaidar borrows its title from the spreading force of the Creeping Darkness, which exists as a sentient artificial intelligence, the WuShi. Elijah is central as a figure in a role he did not choose, but it's HuoJi, the fire-dragon bound to Elijah, that I love the most. Holland makes WuShi incredibly unique in that it cannot technically act freely, but still designs indirect attacks. The standout is a cavernous water beast, and the triggering of explosive steam that completely changes the trajectory of the story. The settings and landscapes are brilliant, from a four-kilometer obelisk that projects energy into a rotating cube, forming a contained sky that reveals the engineered scale of Janaidar, to Bahndahn Towne, where a hovering craft unleashes all manner of horror. Readers who adore intelligent science fiction will love this ambitious second book in the sweeping Stolen Man trilogy. Very highly recommended.
