I’d like to say I delight in writing book reviews, but that’s not quite accurate. I delight in reading, and there are several benefits to doing it for book reviews, not the least of which is that somebody is sending me books in the genres I prefer to read. I will admit to squealing gleefully any time I find an envelope with books in my mailbox. Opening the envelope is frequently a loud process, particularly when I receive sequels to books I’ve reviewed. This was the case recently when I received The Puzzler’s War, by Eyal Kless, the second book of The Tarakan Chronicles. I’m not quite done reading The Puzzler’s War; my impression so far is that it’s even better than the first. I read the first book, The Lost Puzzler, about a year ago; this review was published in the January 2019 issue of Booklist.
In Eyal Kless’s The Lost Puzzler, a lowly scribe of the Guild of Historians is sent on the near impossible mission of locating Vincha and convincing her to share what she knows of Rafik, a child who disappeared over a decade before. Even among the tattooed – mutants whose markings appear during their youth – Rafik was special: he was a puzzler, and a powerful one at that. Only puzzlers have the ability to open doors to the City within the Mountain, allowing their teams to scavenge Tarakan artifacts from the post-apocalyptic ruins, with more powerful puzzlers able to penetrate further into the ruins. Buried with Rafik’s disappearance is the greater mystery of Tarakan society and the apocalypse that wiped it out, along with most of the world’s technological knowledge. This rich dystopian world includes snippets of technology that perplex most of the characters, a steady mix of storytelling and action, and intense character development that makes this book hard to put down. This first book of a new series, The Tarakan Chronicles, will leave readers eagerly awaiting more.