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Wednesday, 30 August 2017

Daughter of the Burning City by Amanda Foody

This book has such a cool premise! One girl's make believe family being killed off one by one in a world of fantasy and magic...excellent stuff. And for the most part, it lives up to it! For almost the entirety of this book, I was fully invested in the storyline and I desperately wanted to read more.

Unfortunately, this book seriously suffers in the last third. As more of the solution is revealed, it just becomes confusing in a badly-written way. The identity of the killer was extremely obvious to me, although there is a secondary twist which I didn't see coming and I thought worked very well. Without giving too much away, part of the climax also involves a character which appears so infrequently I genuinely had no idea who they were, despite the narrative trying to tell me it was a big reveal. The result isn't...great.

However, this book is definitely still worth reading. All the characters are extremely well fleshed-out and they're all so unique. I can honestly say this didn't remind me of anything else I've ever read and that can only be a good thing. It also gets major points for representation-the main character is bisexual with an asexual love interest, many of the side characters are also non-hetero and the fantasy city seems suitably diverse in terms of ethnicity too. I was so happy to read such a casual portrayal of an asexual love interest, even if it wasn't quite perfect.

Overall, I would highly recommend this book. The protagonist is interesting and intelligent, the plot really sucks you in and the world-building element is also well done. This is so much better than I was expecting from a YA book and I could not stop talking about it to people whilst I was reading it. No book is perfect but this is certainly up there.

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