A review by megami
This Bleeding City by Alex Preston

2.0

While this book has a few nice features - a clever title, a prologue that draws you in (though it pretty much telegraphs the whole plot of the book) it is really rather dire and a chore to read. The author seems to have taken every metaphor he could find, gilded with some extra adjectives and whacked them into his story. The plot - boy from average background sells his soul to get the finer things in life (including a girl who is 'too good for him') but discovers in the end that of course that is not really what happiness is about, after losing his way - is trite and has been done much better elsewhere. The characters feel like badly drawn stereotypes, and frankly I never really cared about any of them.
In short - this reads like a bad creative writing program output. There are some fascinating novels being published at the moment - save your precious reading time for them, don't bother with this one.