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anthony_ducks's review
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-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? N/A
4.75
first bit was boring, but the rest was great--epilogue was awful (1 page), and so was the weird page with Emly and Evan.
reddevilrodge's review against another edition
4.0
The City was good but I’m not sure it was great. Some parts were slow and jumps in the timeline weren’t smooth. I also felt like the City itself should’ve been more of a character. It’s well described and has an interesting history but it doesn’t really act as more than a backdrop. My main gripe, however, is the romance. It’s really bad. It in no way represents normal, human romance.
On to the positives, it’s violent, people die. There are ramifications to most events that occur. The characters, whilst archetypal, are good. I liked Indaro as a protagonist but I also felt a strong affection for the side characters as they seemingly sacrificed the most.
Surprisingly, as someone very fond of Fantasy, this is the first Fantasy book I’ve read and whilst I enjoyed it I can’t help but feel that the genre has a lot more to offer.
On to the positives, it’s violent, people die. There are ramifications to most events that occur. The characters, whilst archetypal, are good. I liked Indaro as a protagonist but I also felt a strong affection for the side characters as they seemingly sacrificed the most.
Surprisingly, as someone very fond of Fantasy, this is the first Fantasy book I’ve read and whilst I enjoyed it I can’t help but feel that the genre has a lot more to offer.
lmmountford's review against another edition
1.0
I couldn't make it to the first chapter. I have enjoyed all the david gemmell books i've read, i had hoped stella's who co-wrote david's Troy series, would be just as great but this just couldn't get me interested. I might try again another time but atm this just didn't interest me.
blodeuedd's review against another edition
4.0
I think the best way to describe this book is epic. It was truly epic. I know fantasy is usually epic, but here the word gets it's true meaning. The story is deep and feels complex. It's fascinating, and the world building and story telling was awesome.
It's about a an empire on feet of clay. A city slowly eating itself and spitting out soldier after soldier. Women thrown into the war machine until the only people left are maimed old soldiers and a few children. There is no time for making children when everyone is away fighting. Fighting for the enormous city and the emperor. Everything else if forgotten.
The story jumps in time after we meet 2 children and an old man. An old man of importance. After that we get to know a female soldier and learn more about the endless war. Gemmell is also good at inserting facts and history about why the city is like it is. Why it keeps on fighting and we learn more and more.
Bart and Em shows us the city itself and how life inside is not easy. Fell and Indaro shows us the war outside. There are threads everywhere in this vast book that slowly is being handled by someone. Pulling everyone together for one last showdown.
The book is not one I rushed through to know more. Instead I had to take it easy because that is just how it's told, how it has to be. And when I finished I was not sure, should I be happy? The ending is both a happy one and an uncertain one.
War and politics is what you get with this book. I also liked how she has taken from so much and put it together in a melting pot. Until I just can't say where from everything is (even if it is fantasy). There is Rome, the East and more. I was also interested in The Immortals, where did they come from? I do want more from this world.
I know I give 3s to everything cos 3s means it's good and that I enjoyed it. But this one has to get a 4 cos of the good writing.
It's about a an empire on feet of clay. A city slowly eating itself and spitting out soldier after soldier. Women thrown into the war machine until the only people left are maimed old soldiers and a few children. There is no time for making children when everyone is away fighting. Fighting for the enormous city and the emperor. Everything else if forgotten.
The story jumps in time after we meet 2 children and an old man. An old man of importance. After that we get to know a female soldier and learn more about the endless war. Gemmell is also good at inserting facts and history about why the city is like it is. Why it keeps on fighting and we learn more and more.
Bart and Em shows us the city itself and how life inside is not easy. Fell and Indaro shows us the war outside. There are threads everywhere in this vast book that slowly is being handled by someone. Pulling everyone together for one last showdown.
The book is not one I rushed through to know more. Instead I had to take it easy because that is just how it's told, how it has to be. And when I finished I was not sure, should I be happy? The ending is both a happy one and an uncertain one.
War and politics is what you get with this book. I also liked how she has taken from so much and put it together in a melting pot. Until I just can't say where from everything is (even if it is fantasy). There is Rome, the East and more. I was also interested in The Immortals, where did they come from? I do want more from this world.
I know I give 3s to everything cos 3s means it's good and that I enjoyed it. But this one has to get a 4 cos of the good writing.
tapini42's review against another edition
3.0
This is more of a 3,5 stars-book really. It feels slightly unfair to only give it 3 stars, but at the same time it isn't quite up there with the 4-stars.
eososray's review against another edition
4.0
The first 100 pages were a bit boring but it improved when the story moved on from the sewers. I liked most of the characters and the different POV's were interesting.
All in all, a very good story.
All in all, a very good story.
peter_xxx's review against another edition
4.0
This book started slow and with lots of questions. I was almost halfway and I still had no idea what was going on. But in the meantime I did get to spend some time with interesting characters. By the end of the book there were still some open questions, and some of the answers were things you had to read between the lines.
I will not tell too much about the story because part of the charm of this book is discovering everything for yourself. But I can tell you that if you like character driven, low magic fantasy that this is a very good book for you.
I will not tell too much about the story because part of the charm of this book is discovering everything for yourself. But I can tell you that if you like character driven, low magic fantasy that this is a very good book for you.
robertwhelan's review against another edition
5.0
Nice and easy read. Story kept me interested all the way through.
kimmetjuh23's review against another edition
2.0
Het verhaal, de personages en de omgeving heeft alles in zich om een goed fantasyboek af te leveren. Maar zoals dat in dit boek gedaan is, komt het helemaal niet over. Ik heb me er doorheen moeten worstelen. Ik hou van gedetailleerde beschrijvingen, maar het moet niet teveel zijn. Dat was nu het geval. De gevechten bijvoorbeeld. Elke zwaardslag wordt uitgebreid beschreven. Dat maakt het langdradig. Er zitten verschillende personages in, maar het is niet altijd duidelijk wie de goede is en wie de slechte. Het is me wel duidelijk dat er een keizer is die gedood moet worden, maar wie of wat de keizer is, is me niet duidelijk. Het verhaal springt van de hak op de tak met vreemde tijdssprongen, waardoor ik meerdere malen de draad kwijt was. Op de achterflap hebben ze het over broer en zus Elijah en Emly. In het eerste hoofdstuk leren we ze ook kennen als kleine kinderen. Emly komt daarna vaker voor als ze wat ouder is. Elijah verdwijnt helemaal uit beeld. Tegen het einde komt er weer een Elijah in het verhaal voor, het duurde even voor ik besefte dat het over dezelfde ging. Het wordt wel even aangehaald wat Elijah heeft gedaan, maar dat was te weinig. Het boek verdelen in een trilogie waar meer uitleg mogelijk is, had niet misstaan.
dominish_books's review
2.0
Where do I start with Stella Gemmell's The City? I suppose with getting any thoughts of preconceptions out of the way - Stella Gemmell is not her late husband, but saying that, she did work closely with him on a number of David's works, and completed his final novel in the Troy series after his untimely death. So, although it's not a given, Stella Gemmell certainly has pedigree in the world of writing epic fantasy. The book also comes with a big claim on the front cover from an author whose own works I have read and mostly enjoyed - James Barclay citing The City as being "easily the best fantasy novel I've read in the last decade."
So, coupled with a blurb which appealed to my fantasy tastes, I was really looking forward to reading The City and can now report the following: Stella is most definitely not David Gemmell, and (each to their own tastes aside) James Barclay has presumably not read any fantasy novels in the last ten years. Now don't get me wrong, The City is not necessarily a bad book, it's just that it's not quite a good book either. Reading through its 550 pages, I almost got the impression that Stella Gemmell was trying to show things in their natural light - people doing boring things, randomly losing people never to hear from them again, things taking up a lot of time but ultimately not being done for any pertinent reason. The problem is, this doesn't really work in a novel, as readers are looking to be entertained. Obviously it's entirely possible that these few things I've picked out were not intentional, but I like to think they were, and their inclusion was just an error of judgement rather than poor overall writing.
Onto the book itself, there are some decent enough characters, and some of them have decent enough storylines. For me, the book would have been well served following Fell Aron Lee's backstory more closely, rather than having this as a little flashback, as it has a big impact on the overall story and is also a heck of a lot more interesting than that of Shuskara/Bartellus and his fascination with the Eating Gate. Surely for this, it's enough to know that the City engineers stopped maintaining the sewer's weirs, without spending half the book following the old soldier around the library trying to find out why?
Some characters are maybe not so well rounded, but considering how various players are treated, this is perhaps not so much a surprise. You have Elijah, who we open the novel with and begin to presume as the main character, or one of them. Not so the case here though, as Elijah takes the first opportunity he gets to disappear with strangers for more than half the book rather than search for his apparently not-too-beloved sister. Then there's Stalker, who is portrayed a few times as loyal and willing to follow anywhere, but he doesn't come through one passageway and we're not privy to the reasons why - did he follow but not make it through? Did he suddenly decide he couldn't be bothered? Is he still standing on the other side waiting for his companions to return, like some secondary group character in a role-playing game?
Other than this injustice to characters, and the tedium of much of the first half to three-quarters of the novel, I found there were just too many parts that didn't sound quite right. There's the rainstorm that's so bad that people drown on a battlefield because the water level gets too high so quickly they can't prepare themselves for it. There's half the Emperor's palace underwater because of the failing sewers (it's quite a wet book) although the rest of the City generally seems to be ok - surely they wouldn't let the palace fall so badly to the water? There's a random eight year jump just when we're starting to get into things, although this jump isn't made apparent until after we've met another of our characters and started to wonder if we've missed a page or two because of the change in circumstances.
Finally (or at least in so much as I'm going to discuss), there's an artefact described as the most powerful in the world. Something so powerful that we're never given an indication of what it does or how it does it. An item so powerful that if we weren't told of it's power at the end of the book, we'd have been fooled into thinking it was just a mundane item of clothing. An item so powerful that once it has been recovered, it's then gifted to someone to look after as if it actually was just a mundane item of clothing. This item could have been completely written out of the story with barely a change being made, so it seemed strange to have this revelation about it coming towards the end of the book.
My overriding feeling towards The City is disappointment, plain and simple. It was a book I was looking forwards to so much, had so much promise and, indeed with some of the story, so much potential, but it just failed to fulfil any of it. I've read several reviews and it seems the general consensus is that people love The City, but it just goes to show you can't please everyone all the time. For me, too much of the book just didn't work and too many questions were left unanswered. One final thought - title the book The City by all means, but surely the people who live there would have given it a name rather than just referring to their home as "the City" as well?
So, coupled with a blurb which appealed to my fantasy tastes, I was really looking forward to reading The City and can now report the following: Stella is most definitely not David Gemmell, and (each to their own tastes aside) James Barclay has presumably not read any fantasy novels in the last ten years. Now don't get me wrong, The City is not necessarily a bad book, it's just that it's not quite a good book either. Reading through its 550 pages, I almost got the impression that Stella Gemmell was trying to show things in their natural light - people doing boring things, randomly losing people never to hear from them again, things taking up a lot of time but ultimately not being done for any pertinent reason. The problem is, this doesn't really work in a novel, as readers are looking to be entertained. Obviously it's entirely possible that these few things I've picked out were not intentional, but I like to think they were, and their inclusion was just an error of judgement rather than poor overall writing.
Onto the book itself, there are some decent enough characters, and some of them have decent enough storylines. For me, the book would have been well served following Fell Aron Lee's backstory more closely, rather than having this as a little flashback, as it has a big impact on the overall story and is also a heck of a lot more interesting than that of Shuskara/Bartellus and his fascination with the Eating Gate. Surely for this, it's enough to know that the City engineers stopped maintaining the sewer's weirs, without spending half the book following the old soldier around the library trying to find out why?
Some characters are maybe not so well rounded, but considering how various players are treated, this is perhaps not so much a surprise. You have Elijah, who we open the novel with and begin to presume as the main character, or one of them. Not so the case here though, as Elijah takes the first opportunity he gets to disappear with strangers for more than half the book rather than search for his apparently not-too-beloved sister. Then there's Stalker, who is portrayed a few times as loyal and willing to follow anywhere, but he doesn't come through one passageway and we're not privy to the reasons why - did he follow but not make it through? Did he suddenly decide he couldn't be bothered? Is he still standing on the other side waiting for his companions to return, like some secondary group character in a role-playing game?
Other than this injustice to characters, and the tedium of much of the first half to three-quarters of the novel, I found there were just too many parts that didn't sound quite right. There's the rainstorm that's so bad that people drown on a battlefield because the water level gets too high so quickly they can't prepare themselves for it. There's half the Emperor's palace underwater because of the failing sewers (it's quite a wet book) although the rest of the City generally seems to be ok - surely they wouldn't let the palace fall so badly to the water? There's a random eight year jump just when we're starting to get into things, although this jump isn't made apparent until after we've met another of our characters and started to wonder if we've missed a page or two because of the change in circumstances.
Finally (or at least in so much as I'm going to discuss), there's an artefact described as the most powerful in the world. Something so powerful that we're never given an indication of what it does or how it does it. An item so powerful that if we weren't told of it's power at the end of the book, we'd have been fooled into thinking it was just a mundane item of clothing. An item so powerful that once it has been recovered, it's then gifted to someone to look after as if it actually was just a mundane item of clothing. This item could have been completely written out of the story with barely a change being made, so it seemed strange to have this revelation about it coming towards the end of the book.
My overriding feeling towards The City is disappointment, plain and simple. It was a book I was looking forwards to so much, had so much promise and, indeed with some of the story, so much potential, but it just failed to fulfil any of it. I've read several reviews and it seems the general consensus is that people love The City, but it just goes to show you can't please everyone all the time. For me, too much of the book just didn't work and too many questions were left unanswered. One final thought - title the book The City by all means, but surely the people who live there would have given it a name rather than just referring to their home as "the City" as well?