Our Lady of the Streets

Our Lady of the Streets by Tom Pollock

This is the third book in the Skyscraper Throne trilogy; I reviewed the first two here:
BOOK ONE: THE CITY'S SON
BOOK TWO: THE GLASS REPUBLIC

Undoubtedly, this review will contain spoilers for the previous two books in the series. If you do not want anything spoiled, do not read this review. Dun dun dunnnnnn

An amazon summary, "Ever since Beth Bradley found her way into a hidden London, the presence of its ruthless goddess, Mater Viae, has lurked in the background. Now Mater Viae has returned with deadly consequences. 

Streets are wrecked by convulsions as muscles of wire and pipe go into spasm, bunching the city into a crippled new geography; pavements flare to thousand-degree fevers, incinerating pedestrians; and towers fall, their foundations decayed. 
As the city sickens, so does Beth--her essence now part of this secret London. But when it is revealed that Mater Viae's plans for dominion stretch far beyond the borders of the city, Beth must make a choice: flee, or sacrifice her city in order to save it." AMAZON LINK OF JUSTICE

To recap the end of The Glass Republic, in a super brief way... So it turns out, Senator Cane was helping the reflected Mater Viae enjoy memories of the other side, by removing the essential essence of people who had just reflected over, and feeding it to Mater Viae. That's what happened to Pen's reflected sister, Parva. After a series of more events, Pen has returned from the mirror world, and the reflected Mater Viae has come back as well.

Onto Our Lady of the Streets...

London is sick. Some of the streets are plagued with street fever reading a thousand degrees to incinerate unsuspecting pedestrians, the reflected Mater Viae is kidnapping people with her masonry men, her sewermanders are making rescue efforts from the outside world useless, and Beth has started to sicken from the reduced state of the city. They've rounded up as many allies as they can to keep them safe, but Beth, Pen, and Beth's father are struggling to find ways to save the city.

To increase their strength, Pen rejoins with the wire mistress. Beth's father volunteers himself for a deadly mission, and Beth is trying to hide from Mater Viae who wants to kill her.

I enjoyed this book just as much as the other book, but I have a confession; I'm kind of at a loss with how the book ends. I'm not crystal clear on what happens to a few characters and I'm a little vexed. Perhaps it's trying to go for a more ambiguous ending to kind of let the reader choose? But I want to know what happened to them, but maybe that's a commentary on war where you don't always know where each person (or body) wound up. Or something less.... intense.... eh???

I don't know.

It still had great characterizations, I didn't find any issues with the pacing, but in some of the action sequences, I did get a little lost, but I thought I found my way back, but maybe with my perplexed state over the ending I didn't find my way anywhere??

I still liked it.

Happy reading!