I like Jim Butcher. I'm current on his books. Read all of them. I'm a rather large fan of the Dresden files, and I enjoyed most of his other works. I've done some cosplay as various Dresdens in recent years. Let's sum all that up to say that I'm a fan of Jim Butcher.

Which is probably why I enjoyed this as much as I did. There's a lot going on in this book, and unfortunately it seems to leave much of those things for the next novel then reaching any kind of conclusion in this first installation. It's a common thing in most types of long form fantasy, but in his other series Butcher has always tried to fit some manner of a finish into each volume. 

Aeronaut's Windlass introduce's us to a lot of things, and almost all of it is wonderful. Huge spires that heft human society into the sky where they flit about in crystal powered sailing ships. The sky's are filled with strange creatures and the ground is covered in the mystery of humanity's trip to the spires. Inside the spires there are humans and cat like humans and cat's that have societies like humans and they are all trying not to get eaten by giant shadow spiders.

The characters are of Butcher's usual high quality and there are none that I could point out as not having an excellent moment to shine in Windlass' pages. The POV characters give us a nice mix of the different interested parties and the progression of the plot is kept at a pace that made for quick reading. However, the contents of that plot make for difficult conclusions. Reaching the end of the book leaves us with more questions then the none that we started with. Ultimately it feels more like prologue then a real chapter one for a series I'm going to like. We'll just have to see, because for all it's faults I am going to be checking out the next entry in the series.

The Aeronaut's Windlass gets three stars out of five.