Alexandra Christo

City of Spells, the follow-up to Alexandra Christo's gritty YA fantasy, Into the Crooked Place, finds the world on the brink of war and four unlikely allies facing sacrifices they had never imagined. After the loss of Wesley and the horrifying reveal that Zekia is helping the Kingpin of her own free will, Tavia, Saxony, and Karam flee to Saxony's home to rebuild their rebellion. Meanwhile, trapped in the Kingpin's darkness, Wesley must fight against the deadly magic that invades his mind and find a way back to his friends before it's too late. As the Kingpin's dark magic spreads and his army conquers Creije, these four unlikely friends have to decide just how far they’ll go—and how much they are willing to sacrifice—to win. Praise for Into the Crooked Place: "With its gangland details, creative magical caste system and surprisingly brutal characters, Into the Crooked Place is very much its own thing. And that thing will likely be a story you can’t put down." —Culturess

City of Spells

From the author of To Kill a Kingdom and Into the Crooked Place comes the second in a spectacular fantasy duology, in a world thriving with black magic.

Lauren

I want to start by saying that I really enjoyed this series. The worldbuilding was effective from the start, with so many parallels you could draw to our modern society that it wasn’t difficult to understand the political and social situation in Rishiya and, more importantly, Creije. 

Also, the characters. Specifically, the ‘Crooked Crew’- Tavia, Wesley, Saxony, and Karam. Each with their own personal history, their individual traumas, fuelling their motives to unsurp/kill the kingpin, Ashwood. What was so brilliant about this, was that it made everybody’s motives diffierent, but their common goal unified them. This leads to much intergroup conflict, as each person has different opinions on the groups they ‘represent’ (Crooks, Crafters, Underbosses, you get the picture)- their own biases and the way they behave often in spite of such views is what was so fun to read. To see how trust steadily blossomed and built within the group.

That brings me to a big theme in this whole series, the found family trope. I’ve not read a book which does it better than this one. My favourite part, by far, is that at no point is the notion on “family” romanticisied or done under a false illusion of perfection once they have “found” each other. Families are often imperfect, imbalanced, and won’t always agree- but they care for one another regardless, and always have eachothers backs when it counts. Christo did this in a way that felt raw and genuine, these were hurt and abandoned kids who, over the course of this journey, found a sense of identity, and of family. The fact that these two themes develop interactively, and in parallel, is all the more poetic.

And underlying it all, was how Alexandra Christo really makes you as the reader consider the theme of morality. Really it’s hard to not, as the protagonists reference their own morals and consider their behaviour recurrently throughout the series, some more than others. Alongside this, we consider the possibility of rehabilitation or reformation- I particuarly experienced this through the character of Zekia. 

The first book is called ‘Into the Crooked Place’ for a reason, but what becomes interesting is that the sequel is ‘City of Spells’. Both titles are referring to [roughly] the same location, but the positive shift in tone feels like the perfect representation of this entire series. From our ‘Crooked Crew’ who have found their own senses of identity, independent of the influence from others around them, to the hopeful changes being exacted within the Governing body, as such [we hope] producing societal change.

From time to time, I did feel like things were going a bit too fast and lacked detail- this was especially evident for me in scenes were we had members of the Crooked Crew in different places and were jumping between situations. It would have been nice to have slightly longer chapters, or more of them, to accomodate for this. But it was still a brilliant read for me.

Overall, I loved this series, and would recommend it to anybody who loves a bit of grey morality, magical worlds, and plenty of sarcasm. This series kept me hooked, I didn’t put either book down once!

City of Spells

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