The City of Dusk by Tara Sim is a promising and lengthy first installment of The Dark Gods series. From the point of view of young heirs of the four realms burdened with the responsibilities of their families, we dive into this dark fantasy. Continue reading down below for my opinions on this new release.
Summary
The Four Realms—Life, Death, Light, and Darkness—all converge on the city of dusk. For each realm there is a god, and for each god there is an heir.
But the gods have withdrawn their favor from the once vibrant and thriving city. And without it, all the realms are dying.
Unwilling to stand by and watch the destruction, the four heirs—Risha, a necromancer struggling to keep the peace; Angelica, an elementalist with her eyes set on the throne; Taesia, a shadow-wielding rogue with rebellion in her heart; and Nik, a soldier who struggles to see the light— will sacrifice everything to save the city.
But their defiance will cost them dearly.
Review
(Disclaimer: I received this book from Netgalley. This has not impacted my review which is unbiased and honest.)
I had to double-check, but The City of Dusk technically is an adult fantasy. The writing, however, feels more geared towards a young adult audience. I’m not sure if it is just the fact that the main characters are young adults and feel in a way coming of age responsibilities (with obvious dark fantasy twists). I don’t think the dark fantasy feel is enough to make it more adult than young adult. Not that this is a huge issue, but if you prefer not to read young adult, keep this in mind.
The world-building was A LOT in The City of Dusk. This was an immense book! Sim does a great job of figuring out how the world, its magic, politics, and culture works. I really appreciated how well thought out it was. This sets up the next book to not need to explain away anything or do too much leg work to help build the world.
The attention to world-building unfortunately was a detriment to the plot. The pacing was up and down, with some parts really picking up and dragging in others. Given this pacing, the plot was lacking in some ways. Not a lot actually seemed to happen as the world was being set up.
There were several different narrators, several of them heirs to the noble houses, each with different magical abilities. Even though it was a long book, it seemed that certain narrators were given more of a central role. Granted, I enjoyed these central characters, such as Taesia. I just would have expected more depth from these characters considering the length of the book. This opens up an opportunity for the second installment.
Overall
It was an interesting book. Since the word count spent much of the time on creating the social and political structure and the working of magic in this world, its plot was lacking. This does not put me off as I will be looking out of the second book in this new Dark Gods series.
Find The City of Dusk on Goodreads, Amazon, Indiebound, Bookshop.org & The Book Depository