The city of stardust

By Georgia Summers

Maybe we should stop trying to define the word curse.

The Ugly Truth:

I decided to try to shift away from my classic fantasy books - go for something more “adult” rather than fae-men with big… wings? But, i fear I may have strayed too far.

While I loved the premise for The City of Stardust, I feel that the plot fell through in a few places and struggled to pick back up when necessary and needed.

To summarize, for centuries the Everly family has been forced to lose a member to a, clearly, powerful woman, Penelope, for some unknown reason as payment for an unknown debt. Knowing she was next in line, Marianne Everly, flees with the excuse that she will find the solution to the curse and save the family once and for all.

Instead, she is declared missing and the curse moves to her young daughter, Violet Everly, living her life protected by her eclectic uncles and without knowing the true danger she is in. By the time she starts to question the status quo of the family, the pieces of the puzzle and the players on the board, have already started moving to the end, leaving her left to learn what winning would truly look like in a world full of magic, Gods, and beasts alike.

While Violet was a fun character to follow throughout the story, she was annoyingly trusting and repeatedly made the same mistakes. It was frustrating to see her forgetting what questions to ask and almost prolonging the inevitable. On top of that, her unlikely friendship with Penelope’s want-to-be scholar, Aleksander, was confusing and ill-timed. Like girl, that is your enemy’s main boy, why are you telling him everything all the time?? I get you think it is love (despite the fact, that you two have the chemistry equivalent to a drawing on white paper done entirely with white crayon, AKA BORING), but this boy is clearly useless (so much so, it was irritatingly funny to read about), and, quite frankly, has a misplaced heart himself (I do not even think he knows what love is).

Beyond these two leads, I felt like every other character was poorly introduced and fell flat in terms of bolstering the story. They added nothing to the tale and did nothing to help build the world up and out more.

I think then, that it was no surprise to me, that the big reveal of the end was as weak as it was. There was no real solution or resolve. It felt, honestly, like one long, history book of a world that was not our own.