Name: Red City
Series: The New Alchemists #1
Author: Marie Lu
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Format: Hardback – Waterstones SE
Genres: Adult, Urban Fantasy, Dystopian, Science Fantasy, Romance
Spice Rating: 🌶️🌶️🌶️
Rating:
Synopsis: Goodreads
Alchemy is the hidden art of transformation. An exclusive power wielded by crime syndicates that market it to the world’s elites in the form of sand, a drug that enhances those who take it into a more perfect version of themselves: more beautiful, more charismatic, simply more.
Among the gleaming skyscrapers and rolling foothills of Angel City, alchemy is controlled by two rival syndicates. For years, Grand Central and Lumines have been balanced on a razor’s edge between polite negotiation and outright violence. But when two childhood friends step into that delicate equation, the city―and the paths of their lives―will be irrevocably transformed.
The daughter of a poor single mother, Sam would do anything to claw her way into the ranks of Grand Central in search of a better life. Plucked away from his family as a boy to become a Lumines apprentice, Ari is one of the syndicates’ brightest rising stars. Once, they might have loved each other. But as the two alchemists face off across opposite sides of an ever-escalating conflict, ambition becomes power, loyalty becomes lies, and no transformation may be perfect enough for them both to survive the coming war.
Review:
”Alchemy” is apparently the simplest way to get me to pick up your book at the moment, because I saw this in waterstones, thought ooo pretty cover, opened the book to see what the start of the blurb was and immediately saw ”Alchemy” and that was it. It came home with me.
I had a really good time with this one! I really liked Sam and Ari. They were both so damn innocent in the start and flocked to each other like the other was going to provide a safety net for them. I loved that. We join them when they’re much younger but we follow them throughout their childhood, teenage years and into adulthood! When they each find themselves on separate sides of a rivalry.
The two syndicates that we spend most of our time with are Grand Central and the Lupines. The syndicates felt very similar to each other – which I didn’t enjoy all that much, it kind of just felt like a turf war… so perhaps I should stay clear of mafia romances!! But the CHARACTERS we met in those syndicates really added life to the situation – they were very different from each oher (despite being ultimately similar I suppose, again mafia thing..). Hanova and Cleopatra were two of my favourite Alchemists!
There was a whole world of alchemists and syndicates Marie Lu has created and honestly I’d love to dive into this world more! I feel like the surface has barely been scratched. But also, the ending was so open ended it felt odd to me that this was a stand alone… And that did lead to a drop in rating (not totally down to the ending, but it would have been a 4.5 if the ending hadn’t felt so odd to me!). I thought Red City was a stand alone… which meant that the ending just felt incomplete and confused. But since coming to write this review, I think that perhaps it isn’t a stand alone after all, as there is a series name listed… So, perhaps my dislike of the ending isn’t that much of an issue because there may actually be a book 2 afterall? I’m willing to change the rating if a book 2 comes out and it is in fact a continuation because then the ending isn’t bad at all!
“Maybe happiness only exists in fragments. Maybe it is only the absence of grief.”
Reading With Tyler 
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