Book Review: The City of Stardust by Georgia Summers
The City of Stardust by Georgia Summers
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars
I received an advance copy of this novel from the publisher, Orbit/Redhook, in exchange for an honest review.
The description for The City of Stardust captivated me as soon as I read it. Here’s what hooked me: “A young woman descends into a seductive magical underworld of power-hungry scholars, fickle gods and monsters bent on revenge to break her family’s curse in this spellbinding contemporary fantasy debut.” There are so many things that grab me in that little synopsis. A “seductive, magical underworld?” Sign me up. “Power-hungry scholars?” Forever and always. Fickle gods and family curses? Yes, please. While I did get all of those things, the story itself didn’t land quite as solidly for me as I had hoped it would.
This story brought to mind a multitude of others. I was reminded of The Ten Thousand Doors of January in bits and pieces of the writing style, as well as in the key and door motifs. Strange the Dreamer came to mind in terms of tone and texture, and even the story itself. There was a whiff of The Starless Sea, a subtle hint of The Night Circus. By and large, these are books that I adore. So to say that my expectations for The City of Stardust were through the roof would be an understatement. And high expectations are always risky.
I found this to be one of those odd stories that is strongest in the middle. It got off to a bit of a slow start, and the finish felt shaky and not wholly formed. But the middle 200 pages or so were incredibly engaging. This was the quest portion of the tale, and it was well crafted and well delivered. It was here that I found our main characters, Violet and Aleksander, to be at their most compelling. The various settings were all beautifully rendered. I felt that the pacing and tension, both in terms of plot and romantic undertones, were wonderfully balanced in this section. I could have overlooked the weaker beginning had the ending not unraveled. At least, it did so in my eyes. The tension dissipated where it should have been the tightest.
I liked The City of Stardust, and there were aspects of it that I absolutely love. The descriptions of Violet’s bookish childhood was fantastic. I loved Ambrose and Gabriel, Violet’s uncles, though I actually wish they had been given more time on the page. I was fascinated by the hidden world of Fidelis, and the scholarly underworld that had found its way from that world into our own. Aleksander was a very intriguing character, and I was never quite sure where he was going to fall in terms of relationship with Violet. The mythos here was pretty fascinating, and the supernatural entities were a wonderful blend of awe-inspiring and terrifying.
Georgia Summers created something lovely in The City of Stardust, if a touch unbalanced in terms of pacing and a maintenance of tension. I might have felt a bit ambivalent about the way things wrapped up, but by and large I think this was a solid debut. If everything that comes from Summers’ pen is this lovely, I can’t wait to read whatever she puts out next!
You can order this book from: Blackwell’s | Bookshop.org (Support independent bookstores!) | Libro.fm (Another way to support independent bookstores!)