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jtryckman 's review for:
City of the Plague God
by Sarwat Chadda
This book had promise. Mesopotamian gods! Demons! Adventure!
First, the elephant in the room: the timing of this book could not have been worse. A book about a plague god decimating New York City, coming out in the midst of a global pandemic? As much as both Rick Riordan and Sarwat Chadda try to cover that issue, the book itself just feels...icky. Not that it's taking advantage of the situation, but just that it's missing some of the empathy and depth that should be required for a story like this. The fact that this came out in 2021 means they had time to do some editing to manage this and either didn't or were just incapable of it.
Bad timing aside, there are other issues that cannot be ignored. The protagonist is just...not great? Not that he's a bad person, but he doesn't particularly grow and there isn't much to like about him. After the story drags its feet a little at the beginning, it suddenly jumps from one big set piece to the next, but doesn't give enough time to actually deal with the emotional weight of some of these events. To avoid spoilers here: several massive events occur which should have resulted in large emotional moments by characters are just...shrugged off, mostly so they can just jump to the next moment. As long as the book is, it oddly feels like it could have used more time to properly handle some of the situations that occur.
First, the elephant in the room: the timing of this book could not have been worse. A book about a plague god decimating New York City, coming out in the midst of a global pandemic? As much as both Rick Riordan and Sarwat Chadda try to cover that issue, the book itself just feels...icky. Not that it's taking advantage of the situation, but just that it's missing some of the empathy and depth that should be required for a story like this. The fact that this came out in 2021 means they had time to do some editing to manage this and either didn't or were just incapable of it.
Bad timing aside, there are other issues that cannot be ignored. The protagonist is just...not great? Not that he's a bad person, but he doesn't particularly grow and there isn't much to like about him. After the story drags its feet a little at the beginning, it suddenly jumps from one big set piece to the next, but doesn't give enough time to actually deal with the emotional weight of some of these events. To avoid spoilers here: several massive events occur which should have resulted in large emotional moments by characters are just...shrugged off, mostly so they can just jump to the next moment. As long as the book is, it oddly feels like it could have used more time to properly handle some of the situations that occur.