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A review by hdcamp
City of the Plague God by Sarwat Chadda
4.0
When I tell you there were some crusty villains in here, I do in fact mean crusty.
I'm coining a phrase: "Rick Riordan-esque Shenanigans," which basically means that the characters are awesome and well developed, the mythology/worldbuilding is inventive (and sneakily teaches me a lot about mythology/history/culture), and there are lots of jokes and monsters and cool powers and kids being kids. Bonus points if the setting is super ingrained in the story and the characters lives, and is basically a character of its own.
There were definite "Rick Riordan-esque Shenanigans"!! Sik reminded a bit of Percy in some ways, mainly his love for New York City, and his sarcasm and go-with-the-flow attitude to finding out that the gods and goddesses from stories actually exist. I loved that for the first half of the book he was a perfectly normal kid, just randomly targeted by a confused plague god.
Dude gets run over by an entire train and lives to tell about it. I also love to see healthy family dynamics; obviously it's good to write and talk about unhealthy dynamics because light needs to be shed on that, but we NEED need to see more healthy families.
There was a lot more gore and blood and grossness than I was expecting. The poxies are the absolute most horrifying thing, and how traumatizing would that be?? Idiptu and Sidana are horrible the entire time, but they somehow manage to get worse. And I don't think I minded it really, except that for a middle grade novel it was a good deal more detailed than I would've expected. For me, the storytelling, writing, and characters counteract the super gross, evil villains really well, but others may disagree.
I would like very much to visit Mo's if it were real *cries*
I would also very much like if there were more of Sik and Belet's adventures *cries more*
Have I mentioned there are talking swords and also housecats that are not just housecats? Just read the book already, I'm going to stop talking about it and you're going to go read it.
I'm coining a phrase: "Rick Riordan-esque Shenanigans," which basically means that the characters are awesome and well developed, the mythology/worldbuilding is inventive (and sneakily teaches me a lot about mythology/history/culture), and there are lots of jokes and monsters and cool powers and kids being kids. Bonus points if the setting is super ingrained in the story and the characters lives, and is basically a character of its own.
There were definite "Rick Riordan-esque Shenanigans"!! Sik reminded a bit of Percy in some ways, mainly his love for New York City, and his sarcasm and go-with-the-flow attitude to finding out that the gods and goddesses from stories actually exist. I loved that for the first half of the book he was a perfectly normal kid, just randomly targeted by a confused plague god.
Spoiler
Of course this turns out to be not so random, and also he's ACTUALLY IMMORTALDude gets run over by an entire train and lives to tell about it.
There was a lot more gore and blood and grossness than I was expecting. The poxies
Spoiler
humans mutated and deformed by Nergal's diseaseI would like very much to visit Mo's if it were real *cries*
I would also very much like if there were more of Sik and Belet's adventures *cries more*
Have I mentioned there are talking swords and also housecats that are not just housecats? Just read the book already, I'm going to stop talking about it and you're going to go read it.