Chris Poirier's Review of City of Night

Last updated: November 3, 2008

Angsty young adult urban fantasy; has potential

At the time of this writing, City of Night is just getting started — with five parts of chapter 1 complete — but I think it has the potential to be good.  It is young adult urban fantasy, full of teenaged angst and hints of magic at every turn.  The world against which the protagonists seem set feels large and dangerous, full of inertia and external agendas.

The story follows two characters from different cultures.  Morgan Silver is a Witch — a child of the night.  She lives in an abandoned hotel in an abandoned part of the city with her brother and his gang, but feels she’s a burden to him, because they are all nocturnal, and she’s afraid of the dark.  Sandy Banks, on the other hand, is a Sorceror, the child of a doctor, living in the Sorcerers’ city, kept safely away from the Witches and all their kind.  But something is wrong.  In the Sorcerer’s city, fitting in is key, and Sandy doesn’t fit in.  Her skin is as white as a ghost’s, and she has orange eyes and white hair.  At school, she is picked on and ostracized for her strangeness.

Swirling around these two characters is the growing threat of violence.  In the Sorcerer’s city, the Chief of Police makes speeches about cleaning up the City — by which he means taking back the abandoned parts of the city and wiping out the Witches.  But on the other side of the border, things are little better, for the Witches fight amongst themselves.

Both Morgan and Sandy have reasons to run away, and run away they do.

Now, I know what you’re thinking — this all sounds intolerably angsty, a big pity party for the protagonists.  And I’ll not deny — that’s definitely a risk for the story line.  There’s something that almost seems Mary Sue about it, presently.  Almost.  Fortunately, so far, City of Night has managed to walk that line.  There’s angst, but the characters don’t wallow in it — they take action.  Not necessarily wise action, but action nonetheless, and that’s what holds it together.  As long as that continues — and things don’t come too easily for them — I think the story can work.

The writing itself is fairly good.  It’s densely written, with lots of narrative description and internal state, and not a lot of dialogue, but each part does move the story forward and builds on what has gone before.  The scenes are vivid and the night is appropriately scary.  The prose can get a little purple at times — especially when the characters are dealing with their fear — but it’s nothing a good edit pass can’t fix.

Overall, if the author can continue to walk the line on the angst front, and turn that brooding danger into something real, I think City of Night could turn out to be something quite good.  If you like young adult urban fantasy, it’s definitely worth a look.

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