Black City by Elizabeth Richards – Advance Review

Book Jacket:

A dark and tender post-apocalyptic love story set in the aftermath of a bloody war.

In a city where humans and Darklings are now separated by a high wall and tensions between the two races still simmer after a terrible war, sixteen-year-olds Ash Fisher, a half-blood Darkling, and Natalie Buchanan, a human and the daughter of the Emissary, meet and do the unthinkable—they fall in love. Bonded by a mysterious connection that causes Ash’s long-dormant heart to beat, Ash and Natalie first deny and then struggle to fight their forbidden feelings for each other, knowing if they’re caught, they’ll be executed—but their feelings are too strong.

When Ash and Natalie then find themselves at the center of a deadly conspiracy that threatens to pull the humans and Darklings back into war, they must make hard choices that could result in both their deaths.

You can read an excerpt here.

Review:

Given my general exhaustion with both faux-dystopians and vampire stories, you can imagine my surprise when I found myself actually enjoying Black City. Now yes, this is far from a perfect book – it devolves into a bit of a mess, with Richards throwing everything but the kitchen sink, and the story is far too hectic and rushed to ever really give the characters a chance to breathe – but there was still just something about it all that I very much liked.

First off, from the start I was fascinated by Richards’ world – I LOVED how she created the sense of a city on the verge of tearing itself apart, with crippling poverty, racial discrimination, a walled-off ghetto, martial law, and class warfare all very much in evidence. Actually it kind of reminded me of the recent Judge Dredd movie, being that same sort of morally grey, sci-fi/fantasy/dystopian blend – I mean, the story opens with our leading man, Ash, doing something very illegal, and very morally questionable – and I loved it. It was just so wonderfully not something I’d read eighty billion times before.

But then, as events proceeded, it felt like the story started to run away with itself. Richards never once stopped expanding and expounding on her world – which was fascinating, no question, but it also ended up strangling the story a bit, because the barrage of new information crowded out the space we needed to fully explore and absorb what had come before. It was like riding a tour bus that was driving too fast – everything passed by too quickly, such that I only got fleeting impressions instead of the complete picture. So while the wild potpourri of history, conspiracy, prejudice, and biology was certainly never dull, it also never fully coalesced in a meaningful way.

As for the characters, while they were definitely sympathetic, they too suffered from story overdrive. Richards set the stage wonderfully, such that her characters were poised to confront their own prejudices – but then it just felt like she never took the time or made the space to follow through. So instead of exploring that delicious internal struggle of wanting something everything you know says is wrong, Natalie and Ash instead were given a short-cut – they just quickly got over “hating” each other thanks to their mystical, inexplicable attraction. Sigh. And that was a recurring problem – again and again character development was short-changed, short-cut, and barely crammed into the story, as the plot crowded everything out – such that all we were really left with on the character front were all too predictable YA romantic beats (inexplicable attraction, love triangle, etc). Gah. And so once again this story ended up skimming the surface instead of diving in. 

And yet, romantic grumblings aside, I did still really like the broad outline of both Ash’s and Natalie’s character development, even if it was never fully realized. Seeing Natalie open her eyes, realizing for the first time her own indoctrination and the reality of her society’s discrimination, and watching Ash learn there is more to living than merely surviving, that some risks need to be taken –  there was some really good stuff in here, even if it was largely overlooked. I just wish Richards had given it all a bit more space and time to breathe.

But despite it all, at the end of the day I did still really have fun reading this book. I was glued from the start, completely caught up in the story’s non-stop action and fascinating world – and while it may fall apart a bit overall, it did still easily keep me entertained. So at the end of the day, yes, I will be back for book two.

Byrt Grade: B+

As Levar Burton used to say – you don’t have to take my word for it…

Publishers Weekly says:

Vampires, genetics, dystopia, racism, and star-crossed romance vie for space in Richards’s overstuffed debut…. Readers won’t have to try hard to spot the many parallels between the injustices of Ash and Natalie’s world and their own.

Reading Teen says:

Black City starts out with a bang and the action doesn’t stop until the last page.  Although somewhat disappointing and awkward at times, the story still kept me interested.  This is a whole new take on Vampirism, and one I’m glad I read.