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A review by ladynightwolf
City of Villains by Estelle Laure
4.0
Four and a Half Stars **** Best enjoyed when you’re feeling like you need a little magic. Legacies can sympathize.
Mary Heart is a Legacy, a member of a community of people who used to have the ability to wield magic until a disaster caused all of the magic in her world to disappear, along with the friends and the relatives of many of the Legacies who worked at the tower in the center of their corner of the city. Now, the only thing remaining is a lake made of black water that is highly toxic where the building used to be. Now, Mary, her friends Ursula, James, and other Legacy peers, are stuck sans-magic while the wealthy members of the surrounding communities have moved into their previously magic neighborhood, now called the Scar, to take advantage of the anomalously perfect weather that is the only remaining indication that magic used to be the driving force there, slowly gentrifying the now broken-down Legacy community. In order to protect those she loves, Mary has turned to the regular way of dealing out justice: as an intern to the city police, with hopes of becoming like her hero, the current police captain who helped solve the murder of her parents when she was a young girl. When her classmate and fellow Legacy Mally Saint disappears one evening from the Wonderland club where all of the Legacy kids hang out, she knows she has to be part of the investigation and find her. The further into the investigation she and her partner, Bella, get, the more she realizes that something is wrong in the Scar, and someone close to her may be in danger as well.
This is the second book by Estelle Laure that I read back in 2020, and it was absolutely amazing. She’s a very talented author and she’s quickly made her way to my must read authors list where Sarah J Maas, Holly Black, Margaret Rogerson, and Riley Sager reside along with a few others I love. However, it wasn’t until after I read City of Villains that she solidified her place.
City of Villains turns the Disney franchise on its head and brings it into a modern and urban setting. I usually don’t like that kind of treatment. I’ve always been a fan of fairy tales in all their glory, and have loved the redemption stories, especially in the vein of Gregory McGuire’s The Other Stepsister and Jennifer Donnelly’s Stepsister, but my favorite part has always been that they stuck to the time period. Even though Laure does not do this, she takes the most prolific of the Disney villains, turns them human, and adds in a healthy heap of police procedural, vigilante justice, and scientific experimentation along with catastrophic disaster and creates something entirely new that is still just as enticing, even to a staunch traditionalist like me. It is something all its own and I have a deep appreciation for it and I’m excited to see where this goes!
Thank you to Netgalley and Disney-Hyperion for the chance to read an advanced copy of this book in return for an honest review!
Mary Heart is a Legacy, a member of a community of people who used to have the ability to wield magic until a disaster caused all of the magic in her world to disappear, along with the friends and the relatives of many of the Legacies who worked at the tower in the center of their corner of the city. Now, the only thing remaining is a lake made of black water that is highly toxic where the building used to be. Now, Mary, her friends Ursula, James, and other Legacy peers, are stuck sans-magic while the wealthy members of the surrounding communities have moved into their previously magic neighborhood, now called the Scar, to take advantage of the anomalously perfect weather that is the only remaining indication that magic used to be the driving force there, slowly gentrifying the now broken-down Legacy community. In order to protect those she loves, Mary has turned to the regular way of dealing out justice: as an intern to the city police, with hopes of becoming like her hero, the current police captain who helped solve the murder of her parents when she was a young girl. When her classmate and fellow Legacy Mally Saint disappears one evening from the Wonderland club where all of the Legacy kids hang out, she knows she has to be part of the investigation and find her. The further into the investigation she and her partner, Bella, get, the more she realizes that something is wrong in the Scar, and someone close to her may be in danger as well.
This is the second book by Estelle Laure that I read back in 2020, and it was absolutely amazing. She’s a very talented author and she’s quickly made her way to my must read authors list where Sarah J Maas, Holly Black, Margaret Rogerson, and Riley Sager reside along with a few others I love. However, it wasn’t until after I read City of Villains that she solidified her place.
City of Villains turns the Disney franchise on its head and brings it into a modern and urban setting. I usually don’t like that kind of treatment. I’ve always been a fan of fairy tales in all their glory, and have loved the redemption stories, especially in the vein of Gregory McGuire’s The Other Stepsister and Jennifer Donnelly’s Stepsister, but my favorite part has always been that they stuck to the time period. Even though Laure does not do this, she takes the most prolific of the Disney villains, turns them human, and adds in a healthy heap of police procedural, vigilante justice, and scientific experimentation along with catastrophic disaster and creates something entirely new that is still just as enticing, even to a staunch traditionalist like me. It is something all its own and I have a deep appreciation for it and I’m excited to see where this goes!
Thank you to Netgalley and Disney-Hyperion for the chance to read an advanced copy of this book in return for an honest review!