Reviews with content warning for Blood - The City of Stardust

Reviews tagging 'Blood'

The City of Stardust by Georgia Summers

39 reviews

comebymoonlight's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.25

This book is difficult to review because I feel very differently about the first hundred pages compared to what follows.

Part 1 of the book is painfully slow. Almost nothing happens in the main plot, and even the nothing that is happening feels disjointed and unimportant, constantly glossed over with time skips or interjected with short chapters of (for now) completely unrelated snapshots of things happening elsewhere. Rather than break up the tedium they just made the nothing drag on. This author desperately needs to learn better pacing.

Parts 2-5 I thoroughly enjoyed. All those unrelated snapshots finally pulled together, the pacing picked up, and I happily read the last 200 pages in a single sitting. I am a sucker for good world building, and this was excellent, though darker than I expected. That said, it wasn't the book I thought it was when I picked it up. I was expecting a sort of Theseus-descending-into-Hades adventure which it very much was not.

[Spoiler-light thoughts on the conclusion]

There were a couple unanswered questions throughout the story that I kept feeling would be ruined by almost any answer we were given, and I was pleasantly surprised that they were left as questions. Similarly, I was pleasantly surprised the will-they-won't-they romantic subplot didn't magically end up with a happily-ever-after that would have strained my suspension of disbelief.

In the end, I really enjoyed the 240-page story that started at Part 2. Do I think reading the first 100 pages to get there is worth it? I don't know.

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eloisecawley's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

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drjoannehill's review against another edition

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adventurous slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

Nothing happened for the first third of this book. After that, I struggled to be interested. There seemed to me a massive plot hole - perhaps I was confused. It could have been so much more than it is.

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aliteraryescape's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

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gillothen's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Gripping fantasy, very dark. The central figures struggle with abandonment as well as physical threats and you are not at all sure how it will work out.

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bookish_hollyx's review against another edition

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dark mysterious medium-paced

2.5

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caffeinatedbookdragon's review against another edition

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adventurous dark sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.25

This book had a lot of potential and an interesting concept but ultimately it fell flat in certain areas.

There wasn’t much character development. The characters you meet at the start of the book are essentially the same at the end.

They fact that Violet forgave aleksander so easily after everything astounded me

Violet is billed as a clever, relentless young woman, but I saw none of that in her actions.

The book needed more world building. We’re setup with this great world of magical scholars that really amounts to nothing (among other things).

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