The City of Dusk

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Thank you to Netgalley and Orbit Books for providing an ARC copy of this novel.

WARNING: This book is DARK. There is more than one straight-up murder committed by a main character. Cannibalism is seen/done by a POV character. There is no shortage of violent gore, either.

Not going to lie to you, it took me about thirty percent of the way into this book to really start vibing with how things were going. At first, everything is just deeply confusing — there's so much going on and very little explanation of everything. There's four main characters, plus two others who have POV chapters as the book goes on. That's a LOT of characters to keep track of in a first book of a series. Thankfully, it does get easier to follow.

The City of Dusk takes place in world that USED to be four worlds layered on top of each other. Travel between the worlds used to flow freely, but then the gods fought amongst each other, and the worlds were sealed off from one another. I'm simplifying this for the review because there's a helluva lot more going on. Since the world was sealed off, power and life has slowly been leeching away. The world is dying, and it's left to the heirs of the four houses to figure out how to bring the world back to life. Again, that's an extremely simplified version of events. I don't want to spoil everything, especially the ending of the book which is SO WELL DONE.

The four houses have four different powers, because they all are derived from four different gods. House Lastrider has power over shadows. House Mardova has elemental powers. House Vakara has necromancy. House Cyr has light powers. The descriptions of the powers, and the way the characters use their powers throughout the book is just so cool. One of my favorite parts of this book, really.

Another review I saw of this book describes the worldbuilding as a hot mess, and yeah, unfortunately, I agree. There's a hodgepodge of familiar fantasy tropes, and real world cultures all thrown on top of one another with very little explanation of how things work or are expected to work. If there had been a little more book-specific culture building, I think it would have read easier. This does not really detract from my enjoyment of the book too much, however. Just something to note.

Overall, The City of Dusk is an enjoyable first book in a fantasy series. I look forward to reading the rest when they come out!