"Elevation" is the latest novella by Stephen King, taking place in King's favorite fictional town, Castle Rock

Summary

Scott Carey is a slightly overweight webdesigner who suddenly loses weight. In contrast to Bachman's "Thinner" this is meant literally/physically: He's not losing any mass, it's just that gravity loses slowly  it's pull on him. He slowly accepts his odd, inexplicable fate which helps him getting a better relationship with his lesbian neighbours, in fact helping them to save their restaurant.

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Review

"Elevation" is a quite positive and uplifting  novella - very unsual for King - dealing with death, farewell, illness and bigotry. The title is rather fitting in more than one way :-) Castle Rock fans might be a little bit disappointed, because like in "Gwendy's Button Box", there isn't very much Castle Rock specific stuff in it - the novella could take place in any fictive town.

My only beef with the novella: It's rather expensive if you consider that it's only 140 pages or so - 8,10 € is (even for a newly released book) not exactly cheap. Apart from that, I wiould recommend it.

The Divine Cities is a fascinating and unique trilogy of mystery/thrillers set in a urban fantasy world, Definitely worth reading!

"The Divine Cities" is a trilogy (City of Stairs, City of Blades, City of Miracles) by Robert Jackson Bennett. It's a unique mix of mystery/thriller (with a dose of steampunk) in an urban fantasy setting. I'ts difficult to descibe the content, because in my opinion exporing the world is one part of the attraction - the reader learns in time more and more about the world, the history, the matter of the Divinities, and so on. Therefore it's not easy to write a review without any - minor - spoilers. I try to keep the spoilers as minor as possible :-)

(Minor spoilers below)

The story takes place in a world where gods and goddesses (called Divinities) were very real and part of everyone's daily life. Unfortunately the Divinites weren't spread evenly - one part of the world (called "The Continent") got all of them, the rest of the world none. This had consequences: The continent became with divine power an empire and enslaved the other countries until in one of these enslaved colonies (Saypur) someone (called "The Kaj") found out how to kill(!) the Divinities which in turn had dire results: Nearly everything created/augmentated by divine power (buildings, weapons, even the weather itself) went down/stopped working and the table was turned: Because they had no divine help, Saypur had to invent technology, whereas the Continent was solely reyling on dhe Divinities even for mundane things - which stopped working after the Divinities were defeated. Due to this the former colony was able to defeat The Continent completely.

The story (City of Stairs) takes place roughly three generations after the event (called "The Blink"). The reader slowly discovers what the world ist about, what has been transpired, etc. The next books deal - after some time has passed - with the consequences of the actions of the previous book.

The books are very, very good to read. The world Bennett describes is very  colorful and rich (as one reviewer pointed out: Bennett is in love with the world he created), the characters are believable and complex (and sometimes a little eccentric, too), the mystery elements make it hard to stop reading :-)

On a side note: There seems to be perfect equality between the sexes - this isn't even discussed! Women are naturally part of every facet of the world (poltics, fighting forces) and that's that. No one raises even an eyebrow at a female general. This feels so normally that you ask yourself: Why the hell can't that kind of liberty be part of our world?

Definitely worth reading, thanks to Florian Freistetter of recommending this!