Thursday, February 17, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The City of Dusk by Tara Sim

 




Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on March 22, 2022 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.


The City of Dusk is the first in a new epic fantasy series by author Tara Sim, an author I'd previously enjoyed for her Scavenge the Stars duology (Review of the first book Here).  That duology was a really well done YA fantasy (sorta) take on the Count of Monte Cristo, although its second book very much felt like it kind of rushed through the ending (especially with how many pieces it has juggling in the air) so that the story could fit into a duology instead of a trilogy.  But naturally it made me want to read more from Sim, so I was excited to get an early look at this book.  

And well, The City of Dusk may be a much longer book than either book in the Scavenge the Stars duology, as you'd expect from epic fantasy, but it has many of the same pluses and negatives as that series.  The book features four-five main characters, from whose perspectives the story gets told, each of whom have their own issues and wants even as they ostensibly want the same thing in a fantasy world that is seemingly dying due to being cutoff by their gods.  But each of them, as well as a number of other characters, and the antagonists, have so many things going on that it's hard sometimes to keep track, and some character interactions feel like they should get a larger amount of pagetime, and the book just doesn't have enough for it all, leading to a climax that feels insanely hectic and a bit too confusing, at least to me.  Still the character work is generally very good, and I liked so many of the characters, so I'll be back for the sequel to see if it improves (like another epic fantasy trilogy that this kind of reminds me of).  

More specifics after the jump:


-------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------------------
For ages, the four Realms - Vitae, the Realm of the Elements/Life; Mortri, the Realm of Death; Solara, the Realm of Light; and Noctus, the Realm of Darkness - were all connected with the Nexus realm, particularly to the city of Vaega at its center, the City of Dusk.  People from all the realms traveled between each other, and upon people dying, their spirits traveled from the nexus to Mortri for rest. 

And then years past, the gods of each of the realms broke the connection and placed a barrier around the Nexus, trapping the living from the realms inside the Nexus, and preventing the dead of Nexus from passing on.  And to those in the know it is very clear that the result is inevitable: that Nexus is dying from its loss of connection.  

Inside the City of Dusk, there stands a monarchy as well as Four Houses descended in part from one of the four gods, each gifted with their god's magic from their lost realms.  The Houses are supposed to hate each other, but their current heirs - Risha, a necromancer desperate to open the ways; Angelica, an elementalist who wants power but can't seem to access it without a crutch; Nik, a soldier of Light who can't measure up to the power of his dead brother; and Dante and Taesia, shadow wielders who wish to upend the monarchy and help the common people and realm refugees - are far closer to each other than anyone realizes.  And so when a forbidden and heretical magic offers the possibility of breaking the barrier, they make a plan to work together....even if they each intend to use the magic for their own ends.  

But this magic is forbidden for a reason and more people than they realize have plans for Nexus and this magic, plans that will put all of the city at risk and threaten to destroy everything that they each care about.....
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The City of Dusk is a story that jumps between a number of third person perspectives - most commonly that of Risha, Angelica, Nik, and Taesia, but a number of others show up as well, with one additional character sort of joining those four as main characters by the book's second or third act.  It's a style that jumps frequently between viewpoints within a single chapter (as opposed to the classic each chapter narrated by a single character whose name appears at the top style) and really helps exemplify how chaotic and hectic this book is - this is a book with a lot of characters and factions with various interests, for good or bad, all squabbling and sometimes outright fighting over the same goal, and the constant shifting really helps make clear how everything is in fact all over the place, no matter what any one character thinks.  

Of course there is such a thing as too chaotic, and The City of Dusk manages to generally (see below) not go too far in that direction thanks to its tremendous characters, all of whom are really interesting, different, and easy to care about.  All four of the original main characters are distinct in their characters, their wants and desires, and how they were shaped by tough childhoods that were not helped by their parents - and two of them, Angelica and Nik, have downright emotionally abusive parents, while the other two Taesia and Risha just have parents who put pressure on them (and try to marry off Risha against her will).  In Angelica, you have a young woman who has been told that she should be more easily able to use her power without the crutch of the instruments she loves, and a mother and god who browbeat her about it and push her into trying for a position of power she barely realizes she doesn't really want.  In Nik you have the boy who feels guilty for his brother's death, a death that broke his mother with grief, and left his father - who always hated him for lacking in power - bitter and angry that Nik is all that's left, leaving Nik unable to accept his grief and always hoping somehow he'll be able to prove himself better.  With Risha, you have a girl desperate to do anything to break through the barrier to let through the adrift spirits, despite each attempt coming in failure, whose only solace is how much she loves her friends.  And with Taesia you have the girl who cares so much about everyone, especially those who have been cast off by their system of nobles and Houses, and whose savior complex is only reined in by her older brother, such that when he's taken away, Taesia has no one to stop her from acting recklessly with her power, and boy does she have a good amount of power with her shadows.  

They're a quartet - and really I should also expand that to include several other characters except this review is going to be too long if I do - that has a lot of pressures, to go along with not a lot of experience, which results in them doing some very very often stupid and reckless things.  And I don't mean stupid in like childish teenage pranks, because these are teens with complexes about their roles in life, their roles as saviors and powers, and way too much magical power that can be used to lethal ends....and that absolutely is used to those ends.  The result is that the four of them, as well as those other characters, are constantly screwing things up as they try and figure out a way to better their world, to figure out who is behind the clearly evil schemes playing out, and to figure out how to deal with it all. 

The result is a plot and setting that is very strong at times, with themes of nobility vs commoners, of refugees and their treatment, of blood and heirs and of duties to one's people vs duties to one's self, etc. etc.  This is a world that may be dying, but that doesn't stop oppression, or people liking power games that may not matter, or for people having what are basically religious squabbles, how love and caring can turn to darker thoughts, and more.  There's a lot of really good stuff here in it all.  I should also mention that it's a very queer-normal world, with non-hetero relationships and queer characters being something utterly normal to see in the narrative without anyone beating an eye at them.  

Unfortunately, there's basically too much stuff, and the book can't really hold it all, even as big as it is.  While each of the characters' individual actions generally make sense and fits, they're occasionally incredibly abrupt in how those actions are taken, and the reactions of other characters to those actions often feel like they're missing some connecting tissue - for example, two characters are lovers from the start, and in a seemingly good relationship, until one does something incredibly dumb and the other acts like it's only the latest in a series of betrayals of his trust, even though we haven't seen any other prior such betrayals.  Two of the major characters get minor characters as love interests, only those minor characters disappear for so long it's easy to forget who they are (especially one of those two, who basically reappears as a potential love interest after his introduction like a hundred + pages before with nary a mention beforehand).  And then there's the ending, in which all the antagonists' plots are revealed, with a ton of competing motivations and schemes, and honestly while after a reread I have a decent idea of what actually happened in the end, I'm still a bit unsure as to why they so happened and why the antagonists acted in that fashion.  

Still I had a similar reaction to another epic fantasy doorstopper last year, M.A. Carrick's The Mask of Mirrors, and I tried the second book in that series and found I loved it.  And there's enough characters I like here, and enough promise, that there's a good chance this will follow that.  So I'm gonna stick with this, and others may want to give this a shot too.  

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