Black City
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- £4.49
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- £4.49
Publisher Description
A dark, dystopian story set in the aftermath of a bloody war where a half-blood Darkling and a human find themselves falling in forbidden love.
“A Romeo and Juliet–type of relationship, yet there’s so much action, anger, and angst that the plot line is just as vital as the romance aspect.”—USA Today
“Compelling and fresh.”—VOYA
Natalie, a human and the daughter of a government official, is still reeling from her father’s murder by a crazed Darkling, so how can she now be falling for Ash, a brooding half-blood Darkling boy?
Despite being half-human, Ash is scorned everywhere he goes. The Sentry have banished all Darklings to the wrong side of the ghetto wall and would love nothing more than to have them totally eradicated from the United Sentry States. Though he tries to deny how he feels about Natalie, knowing it could be a danger to them both, Ash is finding it hard to stay away. . . .
In the aftermath of a terrible, bloody war in the still-smoldering Black City, Natalie and Ash do the unthinkable—they fall in love.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Vampires, genetics, dystopia, racism, and star-crossed romance vie for space in Richards's overstuffed debut, first in a trilogy. In Black City, one of nine megastates in the theocratic United Sentry States, vampiric Darklings live in walled ghettos, segregated from the human population. As a "twin blood" half Darkling, half human 16-year-old Ash Fisher is an outcast among both peoples, but is drawn to Natalie Buchanan, daughter of the Emissary who heads up Black City. Readers won't have to try hard to spot the many parallels between the injustices of Ash and Natalie's world and their own, including forced relocations, crucifixions, and torture, along with allusions to Nazi Germany and the use of the epithet "nipper" for Darklings. Despite initial mutual hostility between Natalie and Ash, their romance is inevitable. However, it gets buried by unwieldy pseudoscience (including plague strains, genetic superpowers, and creatures with too many or too few heartbeats), Darkling lore, religious dogma, and questionable world-building, starting with the atmospheric but inexplicable decision to build a city out of materials that smolder in perpetuity once ignited. Ages 14 up.
