City of Broken Magic - Mirah Bolender

So there's this alternative world where some Magi did something with a weapon that went completely wrong and bad and now people mostly live in walled cities to save themselves from these creatures, magical entities that absorb people and places.  Things have been working smoothly in Amicae, so smoothly that people have become complacent and the team of Sweepers, the people who defuse and dispose of infestations before they spread too far, are down to two.  When they work for the wife of an important industrialist they discover another potential team member and rescue him from slavery.

 

There's so much jargon that sounds like something it could be and then isn't and honestly I'd prefer if they called the Rabbit a Smeerp here (see: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CallARabbitASmeerp) so I could distinguish between things that truly reflected this world and the things that didn't.  I really wanted to like it but it just felt like it juddered from scene to scene and while there were parts that felt quite original and different in other parts it felt like the author was trying too hard to be different.

 

Not a bad read and it would be interesting to see what the author does next.

 

A Note: I schedule all my reviews months in advance and at the time of reading this book and writing this review there was no mention that it was a reverse harem story in the title or in the description of this novel.

 

 

My Favorite Quotes:

 

I received a free copy of the book from the author for my honest opinion.

Deeta Richards has lived in this building all of her life. She was born in this building and has never been "out". No one ever goes "out" since the banking crisis years ago. Deeta has two sisters, a mother and father. Most of the families that live in the building are not blood kin as Deeta and her family. Deeta is a very strong willed and compassionate person in more than one way. Deeta helps her mother and her family with their own house work like cleaning and cooking but she also helps the family that lives on the floor above her the Jepsjon.


After she helps her mother Deeta goes upstairs to help "Uncle Jep" and Tom with all of the kids that Tom has brought in off the street that had nowhere to go or had no family of their own. Tom is one of the guards who are the only ones who ever get to go "out". Tom and the other guards go "out" looking for supplies and other things that they may need. Tom is a very loving and caring person who loves taking care of the people who are not capable of taking care of their selves. Tom has always looked out for Deeta and tried to make sure she was safe and had what she needed. After all she helped him a lot with the kids that he had adopted. She would babysit for him and Uncle Jep. She would help them every night give all the children a bath and feed them. All of the Children called her Aunty Deet and they called Tom Uncle Tom. Deet and Tom took care of these kids as if they were their own and in ways they were.


When Deeta wasn't helping her mother or helping Tom with the children she had other duties she had to do in the compound she like everyone else. Some days she worked in the kitchen helping to cook or clean whatever was needed doing. Every person in the tribe had a job that they were assigned.


Deeta always dreamed of going "out" to see what it was like but no one especially Tom thought she was strong enough to handle seeing what went on out there with all of the other tribes. Deeta was to innocent and soft hearted to handle the things that people did to each other on the outside. Deeta and her sisters have heard horrible stories about the other tribes and are very afraid of them. All they knew about these people were the stories that they had been told all their lives. They were afraid of the unknown. They thought that their tribe was the only good tribe there was and that all of the other tribes were bad just because of what they had been told.


They never went out to visit these other people or tribes to find out if they were good or not. They were too afraid to try out get to know these people. They had blinders on their eyes that were put there by their own parents. If they would have taken the blinders off and opened up their eyes and their minds and tried to get to know these other tribes they just might have found out that they were just like them that they had good hearts too. Deet's family/tribe's whole lives were lived and lead inside of a building closed off from the rest of the world. But so were all of the other people as well.


Deet soon learns that the ones that are most dear to her heart are hiding more secrets than she will ever know in a lifetime. She soon learns that the most precious people in her life are not exactly who she thought them to be. Deet is very surprised when she learns the truth of the people who holds a very big place in her heart is not who or what she thought them to be. Will this truth destroy her or will it make her life better than it ever has been before?


I have really and truly loved reading Broken City and can't wait to finish reading Broken Truce to find out what happens to Deeta, her sister Janny, Tom and all of the new characters that they end up meeting along their life's journey. Will they all come together in the end and become one? I love reading dystopian stories at the moment and can't seem to get enough of them. I just wish I could read faster so that I could read a lot more of them. If I could become a speed reader I would set the world or at least my world on fire reading so many books. Seriously though have you read the Broken City Series? If you have not and you even like this genre then you need to give this series a try you will not regret it in the least. It is smoking hot!

About halfway through Broken City, I realized I was reading it in a Max Payne voice. That's because Batman's running monologue is very typical noir, seemingly copy/pasted from a Max Payne game script. Testosterone-infused Batman isn't my favorite take on the character, he's mostly just getting angry at everyone and beating the crap out of them in between rambling about how God doesn't care about Gotham. Aside from appearances by Penguin, Scarface, and Joker, the story's not too exciting or groundbreaking. The art here far outshines the writing.

A copy of this book was provided via Netgalley for the purpose of review.

 

Dear America is a middle grade series from Scholastic that explores in diary form the lives of young women and girls at important points in United States history. In A City Tossed and Broken, the young woman in question is Minnie Bonner, a young woman who is forced to take a position as a maid after her father gambles away almost everything the family owns. But when her employers are killed in the Great 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, Minnie faces dual dilemmas; as she grapples with the moral dilemma of using a young woman's death to her advantage, she must escape the flames that are consuming San Francisco.

All in all, A City Tossed and Broken is both a reasonably educational glimpse at a historical disaster and an entertaining story that manages to be extraordinary without breaking one's suspension of disbelief, and its fourteen-year-old female protagonist is both clever and competent in the face of extreme circumstances. After the epilogue of Minnie's story, there is also a helpful section that elaborates on the historical disaster and features photographs of the damage done to the city.

I'd recommend the book to fans of MG and historical fiction, especially those with an interest in natural disasters and/or San Francisco. For children with an interest in natural disasters and/or San Francisco who can't yet handle a book this size, I would recommend checking out Earthquake in the Early Morningby Mary Pope Osborne; for those interested in a nonfiction take on the 1906 disaster, I'd recommend theStuff You Missed in History Class podcast's 2011 episode, History's Unforgettable Fires. 

And I will definitely be reading more of the Dear America series in the future.