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3.77 AVERAGE
3.77 AVERAGE
Find the original review here at This is the Story of My(Reading) Life
I'd heard some pre-release buzz for The Walled City. The few reviews trickling in were pretty positive. So when I had the chance to request it for review, why wouldn't I? The blurb makes the book seem like an action packed dystopian. Well I was very surprised when it turned out not to be a dystopian at all. Not that that changed my opinion. It just turns out that The Walled City is loosely based on a real events. Which would make it a contemporary. That's pretty cool. A kind of unique in today's YA market. Being a contemporary in no way takes away from the action and thriller aspect to the book. It is a lot of go go go. Which is great, because it makes it extremely hard to set the book down for any long period of time. Annnd even better is that The Walled City is a stand alone. What are those, you say? Well they are a book that has a complete story arc within said one book. Shocking, I know.
The Walled City is told in three alternating POV's. Dai is a drug trafficker. Jin is an under the radar thief. And Mei Yee is "working" in a brothel run by the cities biggest crime lord. All three have secrets. All three have desires. All three want to break out. This is where Dai, Jin and Mei Yee's stories start to entwine. They need to work together to escape the city in one piece.
The Walled City has no limits when it comes to crime and prostitution. There are no laws within its walls. Which makes it pretty terrifying to live in. You can't trust anyone. You always have to watch your back. And you better be able to run pretty fast. It's a dirty city in more ways than one.
Obviously with my above rating I thoroughly enjoyed The Walled City. But I think Graudin somethings extremely well. The first one being the atmosphere and culture throughout the book. Although we are never told where the city is located it's clearly in China. Graudin does a fantastic job of bringing Chinese culture into the setting. As we all know it's hard to come across diverse books in YA. Everything is very white washed. We just need more books like this.
The Walled City is also a fully formed character. Graudin did a fantastic job bringing this very dark and seedy city to life. She describes all aspects of the city so thoroughly that it was extremely easy for me to imagine how horrifying it would for me to by stuck in there. All three characters brought a different view of the city and none of them were pretty. Just the brothel alone makes me shiver. Drugs and prostitution run rampant. Everyone carries a weapon or two. No hidey hole is safe. Not everyone in the city is terrible. As Dai showed us when he was buying food or whatever, vendors he had no attachment to would show worry over his bruises. Or Jin and her cat. Or Mei Yee and the other girls at the brothel. They had to look out for one another. But none of that takes away from the dark hole that is the Walled City.
I can't go to much into the plot without giving away spoilers. The Walled City is also told in a countdown. It starts at 18 days and not until over half-way through the book was it revealed what was being counted down to. And at that point you also start to get some back story on the city. How it's able to function outside of the laws of the country it resides in. How it was formed. It's a pretty interesting reveal.
I also don't want to get to much into the 3 MC's. Obviously there secrets are revealed throughout the story. All three story lines were great and intriguing. Sometimes when there's more than one POV it's hard to connect with each separate POV. Sometimes you're reading one just because you have to. You have to read it to get to the ones you actually care about. Not the case here. Each character brought a different voice. A different reason for why they're trapped inside the wall. And a different reason for wanting to break out. Graudin weaves their stories together so seamlessly. Jin and Dai accidentally fall upon each other. When they both realize they can work together to achieve what they need so much faster than if they were to try and do it alone. Dai happens at Mei Yee's window. And until that moment Mei Yee was just trying to survive the brothel life without drugs and beatings. She hadn't thought about escape until Dai needs her help to infiltrate the brotherhood and the crime lord that runs the brothel. The characters were just well developed and I connected to all 3 of them. I needed each one to succeed and make it safely beyond the wall.
Needless to say that The Walled City is a fantastic stand alone contemporary thriller. The atmosphere and culture was on point. My adrenaline was running high. I was flipping pages at high speeds. Seriously guys, if you're looking for a unique and thrilling read that might make you a little scared to venture down sketchy side streets than you need to pick up The Walled City ASAP. It does its job and it does it extremely well.
I'd heard some pre-release buzz for The Walled City. The few reviews trickling in were pretty positive. So when I had the chance to request it for review, why wouldn't I? The blurb makes the book seem like an action packed dystopian. Well I was very surprised when it turned out not to be a dystopian at all. Not that that changed my opinion. It just turns out that The Walled City is loosely based on a real events. Which would make it a contemporary. That's pretty cool. A kind of unique in today's YA market. Being a contemporary in no way takes away from the action and thriller aspect to the book. It is a lot of go go go. Which is great, because it makes it extremely hard to set the book down for any long period of time. Annnd even better is that The Walled City is a stand alone. What are those, you say? Well they are a book that has a complete story arc within said one book. Shocking, I know.
The Walled City is told in three alternating POV's. Dai is a drug trafficker. Jin is an under the radar thief. And Mei Yee is "working" in a brothel run by the cities biggest crime lord. All three have secrets. All three have desires. All three want to break out. This is where Dai, Jin and Mei Yee's stories start to entwine. They need to work together to escape the city in one piece.
The Walled City has no limits when it comes to crime and prostitution. There are no laws within its walls. Which makes it pretty terrifying to live in. You can't trust anyone. You always have to watch your back. And you better be able to run pretty fast. It's a dirty city in more ways than one.
Obviously with my above rating I thoroughly enjoyed The Walled City. But I think Graudin somethings extremely well. The first one being the atmosphere and culture throughout the book. Although we are never told where the city is located it's clearly in China. Graudin does a fantastic job of bringing Chinese culture into the setting. As we all know it's hard to come across diverse books in YA. Everything is very white washed. We just need more books like this.
The Walled City is also a fully formed character. Graudin did a fantastic job bringing this very dark and seedy city to life. She describes all aspects of the city so thoroughly that it was extremely easy for me to imagine how horrifying it would for me to by stuck in there. All three characters brought a different view of the city and none of them were pretty. Just the brothel alone makes me shiver. Drugs and prostitution run rampant. Everyone carries a weapon or two. No hidey hole is safe. Not everyone in the city is terrible. As Dai showed us when he was buying food or whatever, vendors he had no attachment to would show worry over his bruises. Or Jin and her cat. Or Mei Yee and the other girls at the brothel. They had to look out for one another. But none of that takes away from the dark hole that is the Walled City.
I can't go to much into the plot without giving away spoilers. The Walled City is also told in a countdown. It starts at 18 days and not until over half-way through the book was it revealed what was being counted down to. And at that point you also start to get some back story on the city. How it's able to function outside of the laws of the country it resides in. How it was formed. It's a pretty interesting reveal.
I also don't want to get to much into the 3 MC's. Obviously there secrets are revealed throughout the story. All three story lines were great and intriguing. Sometimes when there's more than one POV it's hard to connect with each separate POV. Sometimes you're reading one just because you have to. You have to read it to get to the ones you actually care about. Not the case here. Each character brought a different voice. A different reason for why they're trapped inside the wall. And a different reason for wanting to break out. Graudin weaves their stories together so seamlessly. Jin and Dai accidentally fall upon each other. When they both realize they can work together to achieve what they need so much faster than if they were to try and do it alone. Dai happens at Mei Yee's window. And until that moment Mei Yee was just trying to survive the brothel life without drugs and beatings. She hadn't thought about escape until Dai needs her help to infiltrate the brotherhood and the crime lord that runs the brothel. The characters were just well developed and I connected to all 3 of them. I needed each one to succeed and make it safely beyond the wall.
Needless to say that The Walled City is a fantastic stand alone contemporary thriller. The atmosphere and culture was on point. My adrenaline was running high. I was flipping pages at high speeds. Seriously guys, if you're looking for a unique and thrilling read that might make you a little scared to venture down sketchy side streets than you need to pick up The Walled City ASAP. It does its job and it does it extremely well.
I received this free from the publisher via NetGalley
Actual Rating - 3.5 stars.
Release Date - November 4th
There are three rules in the Walled City: Run fast. Trust no one. Always carry your knife. Right now, my life depends completely on the first. Run, run, run.
There are three teenagers - Jin, Mei Yee, and Dai. All live in The Walled City and all are fighting for something different. Jin is fighting to find her sister who was taken away from her. Mei Yee is fighting to survive, keep her head down and she is safe. Dai is fighting for his freedom from The Walled City. All three have something in common though, they all want to go home. The Walled City is a city run by criminals, no law and no justice. Just violence and crime. Dai offers Jin a chance to find her sister, while also offering a chance of escape to Mei Yee. They are no in a race against the clock to find what they need.
The premise of The Walled City filled me with excitement and I was so thrilled to get my hands on it. With high expectations, I really dove into this book, but unfortunately I was sadly disappointed. There was an element of originality to the story, and the world building was absolutely fantastic. There were street gangs who ran the place, there were teenagers doing drug runs, and teenagers working in brothels. Living in The Walled City was hard. The first couple of chapters really did capture my attention. There was violence and gore and so much crime. There was an feel of realism to it, (The author mentions that it was based on a real place). Also, it is a standalone! How many dystopia's can you say that about? Also, not everything is hunky dory at the end of it. People who lived in The Walled City, they are broken, they feel like they don't belong anywhere else, and they slowly slink back into the dark alleyways.
I felt like the pacing could have been better, so that the story didn't drag as much as it did. The middle really failed to keep my attention. It quickly got it back near the end, but the pacing in the middle really was a let down. I have read that a lot of people don't really like the purple prose, but I personally enjoyed it. While some sentences were a bit much for me, the majority was OK.
Lets talk about the characters. I liked them enough, but I didn't really connect with them. They were OK but that is all they were. I didn't really care much what happened to them. But they were enjoyable and they were likeable. The bad guys of the story were good, which was a bonus. The romance, I felt, was a little bit insta-love. But you can also see it as the fact that they were each others way out and they clung to that hope.
Overall, an OK read which I would probably recommend.
Actual Rating - 3.5 stars.
Release Date - November 4th
There are three rules in the Walled City: Run fast. Trust no one. Always carry your knife. Right now, my life depends completely on the first. Run, run, run.
There are three teenagers - Jin, Mei Yee, and Dai. All live in The Walled City and all are fighting for something different. Jin is fighting to find her sister who was taken away from her. Mei Yee is fighting to survive, keep her head down and she is safe. Dai is fighting for his freedom from The Walled City. All three have something in common though, they all want to go home. The Walled City is a city run by criminals, no law and no justice. Just violence and crime. Dai offers Jin a chance to find her sister, while also offering a chance of escape to Mei Yee. They are no in a race against the clock to find what they need.
The premise of The Walled City filled me with excitement and I was so thrilled to get my hands on it. With high expectations, I really dove into this book, but unfortunately I was sadly disappointed. There was an element of originality to the story, and the world building was absolutely fantastic. There were street gangs who ran the place, there were teenagers doing drug runs, and teenagers working in brothels. Living in The Walled City was hard. The first couple of chapters really did capture my attention. There was violence and gore and so much crime. There was an feel of realism to it, (The author mentions that it was based on a real place). Also, it is a standalone! How many dystopia's can you say that about? Also, not everything is hunky dory at the end of it. People who lived in The Walled City, they are broken, they feel like they don't belong anywhere else, and they slowly slink back into the dark alleyways.
I felt like the pacing could have been better, so that the story didn't drag as much as it did. The middle really failed to keep my attention. It quickly got it back near the end, but the pacing in the middle really was a let down. I have read that a lot of people don't really like the purple prose, but I personally enjoyed it. While some sentences were a bit much for me, the majority was OK.
Lets talk about the characters. I liked them enough, but I didn't really connect with them. They were OK but that is all they were. I didn't really care much what happened to them. But they were enjoyable and they were likeable. The bad guys of the story were good, which was a bonus. The romance, I felt, was a little bit insta-love. But you can also see it as the fact that they were each others way out and they clung to that hope.
Overall, an OK read which I would probably recommend.
4.5 stars!!!
this book was SO DAMN GOOD. if you like gritty historical fiction which covers a part of history that you probably have never heard of...maybe. well i had never heard of it prior to this book and the walled city is FASCINATING. i want moooooore about this place and the countless endless stories that took place in such a crazy place.
this book was SO DAMN GOOD. if you like gritty historical fiction which covers a part of history that you probably have never heard of...maybe. well i had never heard of it prior to this book and the walled city is FASCINATING. i want moooooore about this place and the countless endless stories that took place in such a crazy place.
I was excited to read this book because of the amazing things I had heard from my friends. It did not disappoint. All of the characters were multi-dimensional, and so well flushed out in their own right, I would have read a book about just one of them! When all three characters were introduced, I'll admit I was scared a love-triangle would occur. I don't always mind love-triangles, and am definitely a lover of romance, but heavy romance and drama would have detracted from the story, and simply would have been awkward between the three characters.
The story carried a lot of dark tones throughout the plotline, but the ending provided some very realistic hope, but also didn't pretend that everything was okay and back to how things used to be. The book acknowledged that sometimes people revert, sometimes they go back to the darkness, and all we can do is keep offering help and love and support.
All in all, well deserving of my five stars. And it gave me something new and cool to research! The actual Walled Cities of China and Hong Kong.
The story carried a lot of dark tones throughout the plotline, but the ending provided some very realistic hope, but also didn't pretend that everything was okay and back to how things used to be. The book acknowledged that sometimes people revert, sometimes they go back to the darkness, and all we can do is keep offering help and love and support.
All in all, well deserving of my five stars. And it gave me something new and cool to research! The actual Walled Cities of China and Hong Kong.
I’d heard so many good things about The Walled City, and the concept certainly intrigued me. A city cut off from the things and people outside it, a lawlessness that had its own rules, people caught up in schemes far bigger than they could imagine, all intersecting to bring their stories together. It seemed like a great starting point for an epic story.
So what went wrong?
I suspect in many ways the disconnect I felt for this book is purely a personal thing, because most other reviews I read for it don’t mention the aspects that were problems for me. Everyone’s got their individual tastes, and that’s fine. But in the interest of full disclosure, and because there’s always the possibility that there’s someone out there who will have the same problems, I feel that they’re worth discussing.
The Walled City of Hak Nam is based on Kowloon Walled City, an old fort in Hong Kong that was essentially left to its own devices and became a sort of city within a city, a place where the usual rules don’t apply, and where drugs, murder, prostitution, the whole nine yards were run often without any interference from outside forces, because Kowloon both was and wasn’t within Hong Kong’s jurisdiction. It was a complicated situation, as it is within The Walled City, with Hak Nam replacing Kowloon, and Seng Ngoi replacing Hong Kong.
You might think, then, that The Walled City is a small sample of a much larger world, the story that we get to see set in a secondary world that is most decidedly not the world we know and live in. But no, not really. Or if it is, it’s the same in every respect except for two place names being different. The world within The Walled City has 747 airplanes, Mercedes vehicles, television. Seng Ngoi and Hak Nam are in the eastern part of the world, and English is a language. It seems, for all intents and purposes, that The Walled City is set in this world, only, as I said, with 2 places having different names than we’re used to.
Which comes across an awful lot like the author wanted to write a story set within Kowloon, but didn’t want to commit to writing something about a place that actually existed, and so instead set the story in a place that was identical for all intents and purposes, but with an easy out in case something ended up not being historically accurate to the places that inspired the book’s setting. A way to say, “Well, it’s not really Kowloon, not really Hong Kong, so there’s nothing to really be accurate about.”
Which left this world wide open for so much creative execution, so many ways to change a few things here and there and make it a wholly original world, even if it was heavily inspired by something real. Television could happen in this world, but just leave out the mentions of brand names. The setting can be in the east, but change English to, I don’t know, some language that isn’t real and that you don’t have to deal with beyond giving it a name. Then suddenly Hak Nam and Seng Ngoi become real within their own world, a self-contained part of a much broader reality, instead of being fake places based on real places, set in the real world.
It would have been a small change but it would have made so much difference, at least to my reading of the book. It felt like unused potential, and it dogged the footsteps of the story throughout.
As for the story itself, rather than the setting, it was interesting enough. The book follows three primary characters: Dai, a rich boy who was exiled to Hak Nam and now seeks to find evidence against a drug lord to barter for his freedom; Jin, a girl who disguises herself as a boy for her safety and whose goal is to find her sister within one of the city’s brothels; and Mei Yee, Jin’s sister, working within one of the brothels owned by Hak Nam’s most powerful drug lord. Jin and Dai’s paths cross and they begin working together, mostly for Dai’s purposes but it also dovetails nicely into Jin’s plan to find and free her sister. Naturally, Dai ends up meeting Mei Yee along the way, conversing with her through her window since Mei Yee isn’t allowed outside, and the two develop a crush on each other as they learn more about each other’s lives and goals.
Each chapter is told from the viewpoint of a different character, and their voices are distinct enough that it’s easy to tell them apart despite all chapters being written in the first person. Mei Yee has more poetic imagery in her observations, Dai is confident and cocky, and Jin’s sentences are often shorter and to the point, which ties back well to her life on the street filled with abbreviated experiences and frantic lifestyle. You can turn to any random page in the book and within a few sentences get a very clear idea of who is narrating, and credit where credit is due, that’s a tough thing to manage and I think the author pulled it off quite well.
The romance between Dai and Mei Yee was fairly predictable, and though it wasn’t given much time to really develop on the pages, it still was somewhat sweet. The two do fall for each other without knowing much about who the other really is and what they really want at first, and I think much of their attraction was based on who they each wanted the other to be, a sort of aspirational crush, as it were, but it was still rather cute to read their budding romance and to wonder how long it would last once they experienced the world beyond Hak Nam’s walls and their own immediate wants? Would it survive? Would they remain compatible with each other? Were they even as compatible as they assumed they were? Honestly, I can’t answer any of those questions, because the focus of the story wasn’t on their romance. But I will say that their interest was believable, realistic, and didn’t immediately go into the realm of obsessive attraction, and for that, I was thankful.
In the end, The Walled City wasn’t a bad story, and it had enough action and intrigue to convince me to read the whole thing through, but I couldn’t help but feel that it could have easily been so much more. The world-building felt nonexistent at best and confused at worst, and as I previously mentioned, it felt like the author was afraid to commit to telling a story about people in the actual Kowloon Walled City. It ended up making a novel that was somewhere between historical fiction and speculative/secondary-world fiction, fitting in neither and so being very hard to categorize. This is one you read when you want something you don’t want to look deeply at, because then the cracks become obvious and you start to ask more questions that can’t be answered. Its lack of easy categorization makes it difficult to recommend: “people might enjoy this if they enjoy… books, I guess?”
So what went wrong?
I suspect in many ways the disconnect I felt for this book is purely a personal thing, because most other reviews I read for it don’t mention the aspects that were problems for me. Everyone’s got their individual tastes, and that’s fine. But in the interest of full disclosure, and because there’s always the possibility that there’s someone out there who will have the same problems, I feel that they’re worth discussing.
The Walled City of Hak Nam is based on Kowloon Walled City, an old fort in Hong Kong that was essentially left to its own devices and became a sort of city within a city, a place where the usual rules don’t apply, and where drugs, murder, prostitution, the whole nine yards were run often without any interference from outside forces, because Kowloon both was and wasn’t within Hong Kong’s jurisdiction. It was a complicated situation, as it is within The Walled City, with Hak Nam replacing Kowloon, and Seng Ngoi replacing Hong Kong.
You might think, then, that The Walled City is a small sample of a much larger world, the story that we get to see set in a secondary world that is most decidedly not the world we know and live in. But no, not really. Or if it is, it’s the same in every respect except for two place names being different. The world within The Walled City has 747 airplanes, Mercedes vehicles, television. Seng Ngoi and Hak Nam are in the eastern part of the world, and English is a language. It seems, for all intents and purposes, that The Walled City is set in this world, only, as I said, with 2 places having different names than we’re used to.
Which comes across an awful lot like the author wanted to write a story set within Kowloon, but didn’t want to commit to writing something about a place that actually existed, and so instead set the story in a place that was identical for all intents and purposes, but with an easy out in case something ended up not being historically accurate to the places that inspired the book’s setting. A way to say, “Well, it’s not really Kowloon, not really Hong Kong, so there’s nothing to really be accurate about.”
Which left this world wide open for so much creative execution, so many ways to change a few things here and there and make it a wholly original world, even if it was heavily inspired by something real. Television could happen in this world, but just leave out the mentions of brand names. The setting can be in the east, but change English to, I don’t know, some language that isn’t real and that you don’t have to deal with beyond giving it a name. Then suddenly Hak Nam and Seng Ngoi become real within their own world, a self-contained part of a much broader reality, instead of being fake places based on real places, set in the real world.
It would have been a small change but it would have made so much difference, at least to my reading of the book. It felt like unused potential, and it dogged the footsteps of the story throughout.
As for the story itself, rather than the setting, it was interesting enough. The book follows three primary characters: Dai, a rich boy who was exiled to Hak Nam and now seeks to find evidence against a drug lord to barter for his freedom; Jin, a girl who disguises herself as a boy for her safety and whose goal is to find her sister within one of the city’s brothels; and Mei Yee, Jin’s sister, working within one of the brothels owned by Hak Nam’s most powerful drug lord. Jin and Dai’s paths cross and they begin working together, mostly for Dai’s purposes but it also dovetails nicely into Jin’s plan to find and free her sister. Naturally, Dai ends up meeting Mei Yee along the way, conversing with her through her window since Mei Yee isn’t allowed outside, and the two develop a crush on each other as they learn more about each other’s lives and goals.
Each chapter is told from the viewpoint of a different character, and their voices are distinct enough that it’s easy to tell them apart despite all chapters being written in the first person. Mei Yee has more poetic imagery in her observations, Dai is confident and cocky, and Jin’s sentences are often shorter and to the point, which ties back well to her life on the street filled with abbreviated experiences and frantic lifestyle. You can turn to any random page in the book and within a few sentences get a very clear idea of who is narrating, and credit where credit is due, that’s a tough thing to manage and I think the author pulled it off quite well.
The romance between Dai and Mei Yee was fairly predictable, and though it wasn’t given much time to really develop on the pages, it still was somewhat sweet. The two do fall for each other without knowing much about who the other really is and what they really want at first, and I think much of their attraction was based on who they each wanted the other to be, a sort of aspirational crush, as it were, but it was still rather cute to read their budding romance and to wonder how long it would last once they experienced the world beyond Hak Nam’s walls and their own immediate wants? Would it survive? Would they remain compatible with each other? Were they even as compatible as they assumed they were? Honestly, I can’t answer any of those questions, because the focus of the story wasn’t on their romance. But I will say that their interest was believable, realistic, and didn’t immediately go into the realm of obsessive attraction, and for that, I was thankful.
In the end, The Walled City wasn’t a bad story, and it had enough action and intrigue to convince me to read the whole thing through, but I couldn’t help but feel that it could have easily been so much more. The world-building felt nonexistent at best and confused at worst, and as I previously mentioned, it felt like the author was afraid to commit to telling a story about people in the actual Kowloon Walled City. It ended up making a novel that was somewhere between historical fiction and speculative/secondary-world fiction, fitting in neither and so being very hard to categorize. This is one you read when you want something you don’t want to look deeply at, because then the cracks become obvious and you start to ask more questions that can’t be answered. Its lack of easy categorization makes it difficult to recommend: “people might enjoy this if they enjoy… books, I guess?”
i tried to read this while in the middle of a reading slump so i ended up dnfing it, but what i did read of it was interesting enough so it gets 3 stars.
4.75 stars
I adored this story so much!
First of all, it is gripping and fast-paced and you don't get to the point of being bored out of your mind. The book takes place during the time frame of eighteen days (plus the epilogue, which takes place 180 days after the events of the main story) and it's told as a countdown, meaning it starts at day seventeen and ends at zero. Because of this, it's more absorbing the closer you get to the last day.
Secondly, the world building is fantastic. Ryan Graudin explains both how the city and its surroundings look like and what kind of political system it has (I mean as much as you can even call it a 'political system'), and she explains it in great detail. I for one never had trouble to picture anything. Also, the idea that a city like this walled city had actually existed in the past is unbelievable. A city for criminals and thieves and hookers - definitely an interesting concept.
And last but not least, I adored the characters. Out of the three protagonists, Mei Yee is probably the weakest, but even she develops strength as the story progresses. It has probably to do with the fact that you just need a certain bite to survive in the Walled City, but in this book, you don't have the annoying 'Why the crap are you not doing anything?!-characters. No, these people are strong-willed, determined fighters with their goals clearly set in mind (again, Jin and Dai a bit more than Mei Yee. But then again, Mei Yee is locked up in a brothel; she can't exactly be running around in the streets fighting for freedom).
You also don't meet any painfully obvious stereotypes, which is definitely a plus, too.
Honestly, the only reason this book doesn't get 5 stars from me is that I'm a bit iffy about the romance. I mean it's not really overly annoying. But I do feel that Dai and Mei Yee have a bit of an instalove, and it feels fake at the beginning. I got the feeling that the only reason they were so entranced with each other at first is because a) Mei Yee doesn't see strangers on a daily basis, so of course this boy (who also happens to be around the same age as her) fascinates her, and b) Dai thinks she's pretty. So it's a bit superficial and I'm not sure it was really needed. The book totally could have survived without it and it wouldn't have been any less interesting.
Overall, "The Walled City" is definitely a book worth being picked up!
I adored this story so much!
First of all, it is gripping and fast-paced and you don't get to the point of being bored out of your mind. The book takes place during the time frame of eighteen days (plus the epilogue, which takes place 180 days after the events of the main story) and it's told as a countdown, meaning it starts at day seventeen and ends at zero. Because of this, it's more absorbing the closer you get to the last day.
Secondly, the world building is fantastic. Ryan Graudin explains both how the city and its surroundings look like and what kind of political system it has (I mean as much as you can even call it a 'political system'), and she explains it in great detail. I for one never had trouble to picture anything. Also, the idea that a city like this walled city had actually existed in the past is unbelievable. A city for criminals and thieves and hookers - definitely an interesting concept.
And last but not least, I adored the characters. Out of the three protagonists, Mei Yee is probably the weakest, but even she develops strength as the story progresses. It has probably to do with the fact that you just need a certain bite to survive in the Walled City, but in this book, you don't have the annoying 'Why the crap are you not doing anything?!-characters. No, these people are strong-willed, determined fighters with their goals clearly set in mind (again, Jin and Dai a bit more than Mei Yee. But then again, Mei Yee is locked up in a brothel; she can't exactly be running around in the streets fighting for freedom).
You also don't meet any painfully obvious stereotypes, which is definitely a plus, too.
Honestly, the only reason this book doesn't get 5 stars from me is that I'm a bit iffy about the romance. I mean it's not really overly annoying. But I do feel that Dai and Mei Yee have a bit of an instalove, and it feels fake at the beginning. I got the feeling that the only reason they were so entranced with each other at first is because a) Mei Yee doesn't see strangers on a daily basis, so of course this boy (who also happens to be around the same age as her) fascinates her, and b) Dai thinks she's pretty. So it's a bit superficial and I'm not sure it was really needed. The book totally could have survived without it and it wouldn't have been any less interesting.
Overall, "The Walled City" is definitely a book worth being picked up!
4 1/2 stars maybe just because it took a little while for me to fall into the story. Wow. Everyone needs to read this book. Everyone. It’s heart wrenching and has enough truth in it to be very important. By about 60% of the way through I needed to know the rest badly. I care deeply for these characters, they’re so broken but strong. I don’t want to talk about the plot or characters much more than the synopsis does because I think you’re better off just experiencing it. I really enjoyed Invictus, also by Ryan Graudin. This is very different but equally well written, if not better. The endings to both had tears slowly leaking down my face and I’m left wanting more even though the plot is completed. I’m not doing a very good job of selling this. Please just read it. Or listen to it - the audiobook version is FANTASTIC.